[MUSIC INTERVIEW] ANXIOUS – Bambi Interview

Somewhere in the blur of endless touring, Anxious vocalist Grady Allen was sitting in a hotel room and stumbled upon a name typed into a long-forgotten memo on his phone: Bambi. “We should have named the band Bambi,” he recalls admitting to his bandmates. The tenor of the conversation is likely familiar to anyone of a certain age, when you reflect on choices that a younger version of yourself made and reckon with how things could be different if you’d chosen a different path. Bambi stuck with the band after that night and eventually it evolved from a “what-if” into the name of Anxious’ second full-length album.

‘Bambi’ is a record of remarkable growth, depth, ambition, and energy. It takes all the unsolvable and unavoidable problems of exiting adolescence and makes them resonate in urgent and authentic new ways. The album has deep roots in the storied lineage of Northeast tri-state hardcore and emo, but it also fully embraces the widescreen alternative rock songwriting at which Anxious have previously only hinted. It’s a statement of purpose, the kind of album that comes from a band reconciling where they’ve been with where they want to go. ‘Bambi’ is the sound of Anxious putting everything on the line–and coming out on the other side better than ever.

In 2022, Anxious (Allen, guitarist/co-vocalist Dante Melucci, drummer Jonny Camner, bassist Sam Allen, and guitarist Tommy Harte) released their debut album, ‘Little Green House’, winning over fans and critics alike, and kicking off what would become two entire years of touring.

As thoughts of LP2 loomed, Allen began to have questions about what being in a band for the long haul really looks like. “I started exploring what it would look like to finish college,” he explains. “I looked at the whole thing through this very binary lens: I could either do the band or go back to school. So when I unveiled everything to the guys I think everyone perceived it as ‘Well, Grady is just leaving.’ I think I probably thought about it that way, too. It caused this massive rift between me and everyone else. I think there was very much a sense of ‘Huh, the band may break up or maybe Grady just won’t be in the band anymore.’” A round of touring in Asia and the States proved surprisingly reinvigorating, and school began to seem like something that could coexist in balance with the band–but Allen’s faith needed repairing along with his relationship to his bandmates. Meanwhile, both he and Melucci were also struggling with the toll constant touring had taken on their respective romantic partnerships back home. To say this loaded atmosphere wasn’t conducive to creativity might be an understatement, but in the midst of all the turmoil, ‘Bambi’ was created.

Inspired by “big swing” records like Blink-182’s self-titled or Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, Anxious set out to redefine the band without losing sight of what made them work in the first place. “The idea that Bambi should have been the band name sort of turned into this sentiment that got carried onto the LP,” says Allen. “Bambi is the band we could have been, that I want us to be–and I think the record is that.” The songs formed in fits and starts, with the bulk of the work taking place in the band’s homebase of Fairfield County, Connecticut, during a rare four-month break. “The whole album stayed a mystery to me for so long because there were so many wrong ways to do it,” says Melucci when considering the classic trope of a band attempting to avoid the sophomore slump. The members aimed to reconnect creatively in the same basement where they wrote Little Green House years before, but things didn’t truly take shape until they entered Barber Shop Studios with producer/engineer Brett Romnes (Oso Oso, The Movielife, Front Bottoms).

Their span of influences is wide, drawing on everything from The Smashing Pumpkins, to The Beach Boys, to Animal Collective, but these sounds are then filtered through a strong sense of what makes a good Anxious song.

This week Anxious sat down for a chat with Dave Griffiths about the brand new album.

Take a listen to the interview right here: