Anxious talk internal shakeups, disillusionment with hardcore, Death Cab, & their great new LP ‘Bambi’

Between 2022 and 2024, Anxious released their debut album Little Green House on Run For Cover; were widely championed as one of the brightest new voices in punk, emo, and hardcore; and worked their asses off throughout a near-endless tour schedule that culminated in a co-headlining tour with likeminded peers One Step Closer and Koyo, a tour that signified that Anxious were part of a new generation who were ready to leave their own mark. All signs pointed towards Anxious as a rising band to watch with a bright future, but for vocalist Grady Allen, it was starting to feel like there was nothing left for Anxious to achieve.

“I had spent a lot of time–all of my teen years and very early young adulthood–just kind of striving for this one thing, and that was wanting to be in a band that was moving and touring all the time and making music,” he says. “And then I felt like I’d sort of arrived at it in a lot of ways–not that Anxious was or is this ginormous band, but a lot of the dreams and hopes I had were getting really fulfilled. But weirdly, I didn’t feel fulfilled.”

Little Green House was Anxious’ debut album, but the band formed and started releasing EPs (including one for the respected hardcore label Triple B Records) about six years earlier, when the members were still in their early years of high school. Now Grady found himself in his early twenties, and he started to fear that his whole life would become wrapped up in this one thing. So, to find that personal fulfillment, he looked outside of music and decided to finish college, where he could have “a diversity of experiences and get to interact with different people that had nothing to do with touring, or [whose] only lens for the world wasn’t touring or alternative music or hardcore or anything.”

It was the kind of decision that could easily derail a band’s career, and Grady’s longtime friend and bandmate Dante Melucci admits it was a stressful situation, but it actually ended up saving Anxious and leading to the creation of their excellent sophomore album, Bambi.

All of the members of Anxious–not just Grady–took the time to do their own thing outside of Anxious, and when it came to writing the new record, Dante filled some of the gaps that were left by Grady wanting some space from the band. You could accurately call Grady and Dante co-lead-singers on this album, and songs like “Head & Spine” and “Bambi’s Theme” have some of the most inspired emo dual vocals this side of Tell All Your Friends. Other songs, like the ballad-driven “Some Girls,” find Dante contributing some of the most personal songwriting he’s ever brought to Anxious.

When Grady sat down to write from his perspective, the subject matter that came out was impacted by where he was at in life and with music too, he says, “whether that’s disillusionment with music/hardcore subculture, or my friendships, or intimate romantic relationships.” One of his biggest influences, lyrically, was Ben Gibbard–particularly Death Cab For Cutie’s soon-to-turn 20 Plans album–and the way “he’s able to kind of take these insignificant moments and make them significant.”

Grady refers to his lyricism on Bambi as “more subtle” than on Little Green House, and Bambi is more subtle musically too. Like a lot of great debut albums do, Little Green House found Anxious with their foot on the gas almost the entire time, churning out banger after banger. On Bambi, Anxious allow themselves to slow down a bit and take some detours, whether that’s incorporating harmonies inspired by The Beach Boys and Animal Collective, or blurring the lines between louder-than-life rock music and a sentimental softness the way Jimmy Eat World did on Bleed American. The range of influences on Bambi is wider than on Little Green House, and the end result is something that sounds even more original. Bambi requires a little more patience than Little Green House did, and Anxious have earned it.

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Did you have any fears of a sophomore slump?

Dante: I was really paranoid about that. I think with Grady wanting some space from just being totally enveloped in band stuff, I also felt like we had to do better than we did the first time, to keep things interesting and keep the band alive. So there’s a lot of internal pressure that we were putting on ourselves.

Grady: I felt a lot of pressure in that we can’t let this be this slump, or this lacking record, but at the same time, not feeling like I had the ability to put that forward. In that way, putting this record together was this difficult experience of needing that more than ever at a time when I didn’t feel like I had it. I feel like lucky in that way; I think the record kind of has a diversity to it that the first one doesn’t. Dante’s writing and his lyrics are more present through the record, so I think there’s a more varied viewpoint in the record. It’s more than just me. I feel fortunate in that because it was in the time where I was really struggling to put myself together and put it all together creatively with the band.

I like that, regardless of how melodic your music gets, you still introduce yourselves at shows as “a hardcore band from Connecticut.” How does hardcore inform the way Anxious operate as a band in 2025?

Grady: Obviously Anxious, and Bambi specifically, doesn’t sound like what a lot of people would think of as a hardcore band or a hardcore record, and probably if I heard it abstractly not knowing the band, I don’t know if I would categorize it as that, but I think for me, hardcore and that music scene is so intrinsic to Anxious and where Anxious comes from and where I come from, and it’s not just where we come from but the space that we all still very much inhabit and partake in. As much as certain songs and sentiments of the record might reflect a real frustration and anger and just exhaustion with a lot of elements of that scene and that world, it’s so inherently and intrinsically us. Hardcore really is a spectrum, whether you’re talking about Embrace or Hatebreed, and so to me, hardcore is both so narrow and it’s totally not. And when I think of hardcore, I think ethos trumps sound or style. And so, to me, how we operate as a band and how we all operate as individuals makes me feel comfortable and valid in saying we’re a hardcore band.

How did those frustrations with the hardcore scene show up for you on this record?

Grady: It manifests itself specifically on “Never Said.” I want to make it clear: a lot of my soul searching and frustration and anxiety around music and life kind of existing in this one lane was very much a personal, totally solitary journey. But, you know, for as many amazing things that this scene and this world has to offer, there’s this kind of unmatched capacity for mean-spiritedness and insincerity and just real lack of kindness. It’s always kind of dressed up in this half joke… I think I really struggled with that, with just feeling like I was sharing space with a lot of people for whom it seemed like this world was a real vehicle to be snide and cruel to other people and not even willing to be forward-facing about it. And I think it was also a little bit influenced by hearing pieces here and there that people that we knew and were friends with were questioning our character or questioning how much we care about this or that. It’s typically not an energy that I would wanna give into, but for this song, it felt really natural.

Bambi was produced by Brett Romnes (of The Movielife and I Am The Avalanche), who you also worked with on your 2023 single “Down, Down.” What made you go with Brett?

Grady: When we brought in “Down, Down,” within an hour, Brett had like totally reworked and changed it. Almost immediately we were like, “Oh this guy, we have to do the full-length with him.” He just makes everything so easy, he thinks about things in such a cool way. He really did amplify these songs and just take them to a next level. Brett was truly fantastic to work with and I think really made the record what it is in a lot of ways.

How did having [second guitarist] Tommy Harte in the band for this one change things?

Grady: There’s just an air of positivity that floats around that guy, and it is really infectious. Him and Dante were working on all the guitar stuff together, but I–just to have him in the studio brought a lot of positivity and life. It was awesome getting to work on all the songs with him. Just to have somebody there–Little Green House was just the four of us, and so it felt really cool to feel like the whole band was rounded out and the entirety of Anxious was there and it wasn’t like a group of us and a phantom member.

Dante: It’s a step to trust someone else with doing this kind of thing. It felt the same way working with Brett, where you’re taking this thing you care about and you’re letting someone else be a part of it. He wrote one of the best riffs on the record, the riff on the chorus of “I’ll Be Around.”

Tommy definitely brings a lot of joy and energy to the live show as well.

Grady: Tommy’s sheer capacity for smiling, jumping, and going apeshit on stage, while also playing perfectly–it’s pretty unmatched.

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Bambi arrives February 21 via Run For Cover, and you can pick it up on yellow vinyl in the BV shop. One day earlier Anxious are playing a free in-store at Rough Tradfe in NYC. They begin a headlining tour on March 11 in Philly with Stateside (who also opened one of the legs of the tour with OSC and Koyo) and UltraQ. All dates, including NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on April 10, are listed below.

Bambi by ANXIOUS

Anxious — 2025 Tour Dates
02/20 New York, NY @ Rough Trade NYC (in-store)
03/11 Philadelphia, PA @ Ukie Club *
03/12 Washington, DC @ Songbyrd *
03/13 Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall *
03/14 Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle *
03/15 Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 *
03/16 Nashville, TN @ Drkmttr *
03/18 Dallas, TX @ Club Dada *
03/19 Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room *
03/21 Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge *
03/22 San Diego, CA @ Voodoo Room *
03/23 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex *
03/25 San Francisco, CA @ Brick & Mortar
03/28 Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall *
03/29 Seattle, WA @ Madam Lou’s *
03/31 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court *
04/02 Denver, CO @ Globe Hall *
04/05 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry *
04/06 Chicago, IL @ Cobra Lounge *
04/07 Hamtramck, MI @ Sanctuary Detroit *
04/08 Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s *
04/10 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom *
04/11 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair *

* w/ Ultra Q, Stateside

@brooklynvegan

Emo/punk/melodic hardcore band Anxious discuss some of the influences behind their new album ‘Bambi’

♬ original sound – BrooklynVegan