How Anxious finally discovered who they really are

Grady Allen wasn’t sure that Bambi, the second Anxious album, was ever going to get made. He formed the band in 2016, when he was 15, before their debut Little Green House was released to great acclaim in 2022. But that wasn’t enough to stop him having some rather existential concerns about his career, and having this creative endeavour be the one thing that would define his identity, his life, his existence. And so he didn’t know, when it came time to make their second record, that they actually would.

“It wasn’t a frustration with the band or how the band operates,” he explains to Kerrang! today, “or just a, ‘Shit, we’re just not making enough money to make this worthwhile.’ It was more like, ‘I love this thing that I’m doing and it’s really great, but I’ve been doing it since I was 15, and I’m worried about being a fully-baked, adult, human man, and my reference point and lens to understanding the world is alternative music and the back bench of a transit van.”

And so, Grady started juggling (and struggling with) what he thought was the fork in the road of his future: continue the band or finish college. That in turn led to some simmering tension between him and the rest of Anxious – guitarist/co-vocalist Dante Melucci, who’d been there from almost the beginning, drummer Jonny Camner, bassist Sam Allen, and guitarist Tommy Harte. It wasn’t ever malicious, nor did anything reach boiling point, but things did feel a little frayed at times. In the end, both paths prevailed for Grady. But that impasse and uncertainty ultimately – and rather ironically – led to the creation of their brilliant, genre-defying second album. It’s a hardcore record still, but one that pays no heed to the conventions of the genre, instead turning to inspirations as unlikely as The Beach Boys and Animal Collective. On paper, that sounds like that would be be harder than just making a straight-up hardcore album, but it actually came together pretty organically.

“To combat a lot of those thoughts and the stress of all of it, a lot of the songs that I brought to the table, in the process of writing them and coming up with the melodies, I’d try and listen inside myself as to what felt the best,” says Dante. “I tried to not overthink it. It’s hard to explain, but a lot of the parts that feel important to what the songs are, I think came from this feeling of, ‘That’s what it’s supposed to be.’”

That, then, is the crux of Bambi. Its title comes from a long-forgotten note Grady found in his phone, which had been an original contender for a band moniker, and while much has been made of this being a reset record – mainly for the way it pushes the boundaries of their brand of post-hardcore/emo – really it’s just the sound of Anxious truly finding themselves, as well as who and what they feel they’re meant to be. The fact that the struggles and concerns fuelling Bambi’s and the band’s existence took Anxious to a whole new level – resulting in one of the best records of the year so far – wasn’t in any way intentional, but is nevertheless a very welcome by-product that came with finding their zest for making music again.

“I love that we get to do Anxious,” says Dante. “It’s probably the most important thing in my life. Finishing this record and just putting together this thing that we were so stressed over for so long brings me a lot of relief on the band’s purpose in my life. And now I’m just grateful that we get to do this, and go on tour for so much of the year, and write songs and play them. We might not be making a fortune right now, or even a liveable amount of money, but we’re still making money. And that’s something to be grateful for.”

“I agree,” says Grady. “I have a profound feeling of peace around everything in my life, kind of on the back of this record. I love the band and I love to get to do it, but I’m not setting any literal, tangible, specific goals, because I think in a lot of ways they’re limiting. I’m just trying to embrace this really great moment and see where that goes.

“By adopting that mindset, it’s the hardest I’ve wanted to work on the band and do things in a really long time. So that’s really cool."

Bambi is released February 21 via Run For Cover Records.

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