Before Joe Keery became famous for his role as the big-haired, lovable Steve Harrington on Stranger Things, he was a founding member, drummer, and guitarist for the psych-prog rock band Post Animal.
While his character—a bully and foil to Charlie Heaton’s Jonathan Byers—was supposed to be killed off by the end of the first season, showrunners the Duffer Brothers, along with executive producer Shawn Levy, saw potential in Keery’s performance and made him a core cast member of the show. While Harrington has gone on to become one of the most endearing characters in Stranger Things’ almost 10-year run, it left Keery little time to contribute to Post Animal due to the increasing demands of the hit Netflix show, forcing the actor-musician to leave the group after the band’s first album, When I Think of You in a Castle, in 2018.
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Keery, who wasn’t available for an interview, stated in a 2018 Bustle article, “It’s important to disassociate Steve from Stranger Things to this band because I think it will eventually hurt the band. Those guys are such talented musicians…I think it’s important that they’re hitting the pavement for a while and making a name for themselves, and it’s not necessarily associated with Stranger Things.” In the same article, he expressed hope that eventually he would be able to play again with Post Animal. “It’s just about finding time,” he said.
The band carried on, releasing two other albums, Forward Motion Godyssey in 2020 and 2022’s Love Gibberish, before the members began focusing on personal projects.
Now, with the fifth and final season of Stranger Things premiering later this year, Keery’s back with his bandmates Matt Williams (guitar/vocals), Javi Reyes (guitar/vocals), Jake Hirshland (guitar/keyboard/vocals), Dalton Allison (bass/vocals), and Wesley Toledo (drums/vocals). Even better, the group is releasing a new album, IRON, out July 25.
Allison, Hirshland, and Williams started playing together in Chicago in 2014. Keery—who was working in a restaurant with Williams at the time—joined the three-piece initially as the drummer. But Keery had a desire to play guitar, so Hirshland recruited Toledo to play drums instead. After Keery left due to his ongoing Stranger Things commitment, Reyes joined the band. Now that Keery’s back, the group has grown to six members.
While Toledo and Reyes still remain in Chicago, everyone else in the band has moved to other cities. But Chicago is where they formed, and the music scene there is what helped shape the group.
Post Animal—which was heavily influenced by Australian psych bands Tame Impala, Pond, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard—started out playing a lot of DIY and house shows around Chi-Town, which helped them hone their sound.
But, Toledo says, it wasn’t until Post Animal began touring with one of Chicago’s most popular bands, Twin Peaks, that the group began to grow its audience.
“We went on tour for the first time in 2017 with Twin Peaks, and that was kind of a big thing for us because Twin Peaks was pretty popular in the indie rock sphere,” says Toledo over a video call. “And having that opening slot for them was a pretty big deal for us at the time, to get us out in front of their fans.”
Hirshland chimes in. “I feel like we learned how to perform from these people. These sweaty, high-energy shows that we were playing really informed that. And we ended up being a hybrid, garage-psych thing.”
You can hear that musical blend of garage rock mixed with dreamy psych-prog rock Hirshland refers to on the band’s first three albums, particularly with songs like “Castle,” “Love Is Trouble”, and “How Do You Feel.”
“I think once we started getting more interested in playing a little heavier rock and more prog, I think we were a little bit more heady and trying to push boundaries,” says Toledo. “It was just intense, really fun, honestly, when you’re wanting to up the energy a little bit in the recording and in the playing.”
IRON, however, is different; not only because Keery is back in the band’s lineup, but in its more polished tone.
“We’re older and a little bit more interested in the different turns that you can take when you’re creating something,” says Toledo. “And I think we’re better at knowing when to do that in the creative process.”
Holed up in the middle of the woods in Indiana, the six musicians, including Keery, wrote the songs that would make up IRON in 2024, each member exchanging song ideas and taking turns on lead vocals. The result is a melting pot of sounds and genres—more psych and prog rock, of course, with flourishes of synth pop and folk—that flow together to create a rich, multilayered soundscape. Maybe it was the experience of writing music in the seclusion of nature, but the whole record has a much more laid-back vibe than Post Animal’s previous efforts, with standouts such as the acoustic intro track “Malcolm’s Cooking,” “Last Goodbye,” and “Pie in the Sky.”
One of Hirshland’s favorite tracks, however, is the incredibly catchy “Dorien Kregg.”
“I can’t wait for people to hear this song,” he says. “I feel like it’s something so new for us, but it also hearkens so much to the soul of the band. I remember Dalton specifically going off to write the lyrics and then coming back and basically putting on a stage play for us.”
While he loves the way the song turned out, with lyrics such as “This is the story of Dorien Kregg / he’s always thinking but got nothing to say / always dreaming but he’s stuck in his way / always saving it for some other day / too late / too late,” it was the experience of creating and recording it that stands out to him.
“It was just such an unusual but amazing recording experience,” says Hirshland. “He was just putting himself out there in such an impressive way and doing exactly what he needed to do. And I was just impressed and surprised. And it was, for me, one of those memorable, magical moments that can occur when you’re recording music, watching your friend go nuts in front of you, but it’s just exactly right.”
Toledo, on the other hand, is particularly excited about IRON’s sixth track, “What’s a Good Life,” a synth-laden, dreamscape of a song about self-acceptance.
“I’m super proud of that one,” he says.”I think we all are. That was incredibly fun to make that song. We really found that song during the first session.”
Toledo recalls that they wrote the song at night, and the band had gathered in the living room, surrounded by the soft glow of lights, and they worked together to come up with the chord progressions.
“There was an idea of wanting to change keys to kind of journey through the song, but we were having a hard time with the theory element of like, what is the chord that goes next?” he continues. “And I just remember we were having so much fun trying to do that and trying to maneuver and discover that, and just building that song from the ground up, which was probably one of the most memorable moments for me. I personally love that song, and I think it’s a really great encapsulation of the kind of band that we are and what we want to be.”
Having Keery back to make this album was also what helped make the creation of IRON so memorable. His comeback started with a group text in the summer of 2023. “Should we write some music together?” The five members of Post Animal were not necessarily on hiatus, but simply focusing on other projects.
While Keery was still invested in filming the last season of Stranger Things, the SAG-AFTRA strike was happening, so he wasn’t actively working. The band recorded the new album in three sessions, beginning around Thanksgiving 2023 and concluding in January 2024.
The goal, Toledo says, was never to make an album, just to get together again and write some music. “We didn’t really have expectations for what it was going to be,” he says. “We just were like, let’s just go do what we used to do and see what happens.”
Post Animal will be headlining their North American tour in support of IRON this fall.
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