Well, we have good news and bad news as it pertains to the highly anticipated White Reaper + Post Animal + Rival Island show Thursday (November 9) at Brighton Music Hall in Allston.
Let’s start with the bad: Turns out Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, is no longer in Post Animal. It appears the actor left the Chicago psych-pop band earlier this year, and he’s been scrubbed from their social media pages. We don’t know the story, so we’ll just assume he got lost in the Upside Down. It happens!
Now for the good news: The show still rips. In addition to getting another dose of Post Animal’s trippy vibes, White Reaper roll into town having continued Polyvinyl’s 2017 dominance, and the Louisville band’s April album The World’s Best American Band should be a treat to experience live (“Judy French” is like if Ratt and Japandroids had a baby and we’ve already begged to be the kid’s Godfather).
The gig will also allow us a chance to to get down with Rival Island, the Boston band who released one of our favorite videos of the year a few months ago in “Start Again”. The song throw back to some choice surf-rock emotions, and the video, which stars Barstool Sports’ Jared Carrabis and was shot at O’Briens pub on the Lynn/Saugus border, ties into all that.
“The idea for the video was sort of reflective of the song,” guitarist/vocalist Tommy Flynn tells Vanyaland. “We’re really into some old-school ’60s vibes, huge into The Beach Boys and the work Brian Wilson was doing; nice melodies with some big hooks and choruses. The video kind of captures these modern-day dudes signing an older style and dressing in an older style and being cool with not being cool, if that makes any sense. We just wanted to make something simple that was, on some level, aesthetically pleasing. Whether we achieved that or not I’m not sure, but we liked the final cut.”
Flynn says they shot the video in one night with director Aviv Marotz, who also produced the track at Maximum Studio in Danvers. “My friend Pat was on set getting absolutely hammered and we slapped an Elvis suit on him and started shooting, never thinking it would work and he actually became a nice staple of the video.”
And when it came time to cast a judge who was truly unimpressed with everything in the video, Flynn called on his buddy Carrabis.
“We went to high school with Jared,” he adds. “I needed one judge to just be across the board negative and not into the band and Jared was my first call and he came from the radio station to the set and killed it. Still not convinced he was acting or just flat out dosen’t like the song but the shots of him came out perfectly authentic. We got him about a week before Barstool moved him to their New York office so the timing worked out great as well.”
We don’t know if Carrabis will show up to Brighton for the show, but hey — stranger things have happened.
WHITE REAPER + POST ANIMAL + RIVAL ISLAND :: Thursday, November 9 at Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave. in Allston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $13 in advance and $15 at the door :: Crossroads event page :: Advance tickets :: Facebook event page :: Featured Rival Island photos via Facebook
