Words and Photos by Erin Christie
On March 12, 2020, Chicago psych-rock outfit Post Animal was meant to play at (the now sadly closed) ONCE Ballroom in Somerville, Massachusetts.
At the time, I was a junior in college, and had just started seeing someone new. Both being fans of the band perhaps best known for their stand-out hit "When I Get Home," among others, we had planned to meet up at the concert, as, serendipitously, we both planned on attending (needless to say, I was pretty amped and looking forward to the gig!). In the week leading up to the show, however, it was a fairly nerve-wracking couple of days, as it was becoming more and more clear that COVID-19 was definitely no joke and had made its way to Boston. Thus, when the band made the tough call to postpone the show at the last minute, it made sense, but it was still totally devastating to me, at the time.
The blow that I would sadly have to wait to see a band I as anticipating seeing live came a day before a series of even more life-changing announcements, the first being my college urging all students to pack up and leave campus for at-home remote learning with regard to the looming threat the virus posed. In the end, that concert postponement was almost the first domino that fell in a series of heartaches that befell everyone around me, and beyond, during March 2022 in the United States. Soon, missing out on a concert was the last thing on my mind, given the greater tragedies occurring all around us that were far more important than an evening of live music.
Even still, two years since then, I was excited to hear that Post Animal would be returning to Boston after all this time, with a gig at Brighton Music Hall on May 31, 2022.
Post Animal is the sort of band that makes me wish I had a larger well of adjectives to take from. Their music is transcendent, genre-spanning, and ultimately nostalgic, as I spent my college years dancing around my dorm room listening to "Gelatin Mode" or kicking up a dust bowl of dirt amidst a mosh pit that formed during their set at Lollapalooza 2018. Additionally, my first time seeing Post Animal live was at BMH — there, they opened for the infamously fun White Reaper on November 9, 2017, one of the very first shows I attended after moving to Boston for school. Later, I saw them open for a band I'd never heard of (J. Roddy Walston and the Business) at The Royale, a friend and I being one of the handful there to see their set.
With time, my love for Post Animal hasn't faded, but grown into something more tender, noting the significant life milestones I associate their music with. With their newly released album, Love Gibberish, they open the door for fans to establish a similar connection to the one I have.