Anxious Talk Their New Album 'Bambi', Tease Aussie Tour Plans

Connecticut punk upstarts emo rockers Anxious are walking in the footsteps of some of their genre’s favourite artists – like Turnover, Basement, Title Fight, Balance & Composure, Citizen and more – and are swiftly approaching the release of their sophomore album Bambi, out this Friday, 21st February via Run For Cover Records & Civilians (pre-order here).

Anxious have released a few singles so far – ‘Counting Sheep’, ‘Head & Spine’ and ‘Some Girls’ – drawing from a broad palette of influences from the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Third Eye Blind, The Smashing Pumpkins and even, at times ,The Beach Boys. It’s a record of growth and depth that’s sonically ambitious, seeing the band fully embrace the widescreen alternative rock songwriting they’ve always hinted at, while further amplifying the seamless combination of hardcore grit and classic emo dynamism that’s made them such a beloved young band.

Anxious – ‘Counting Sheep’

While Anxious’s debut album Little Green House drew praise from fans and critics alike with breakout singles ‘Where You Been’, ‘Sunsign’, and ‘Down, Down’, Bambi picks up where those songs left off and skyrockets the band’s songwriting to even greater heights. Produced, engineered, and mixed by Brett Romnes (The Movielife, Front Bottoms, Oso Oso) at The Barber Shop Studios, it’s a record of meticulously arranged, ultra-dynamic music that’s perfectly tailored to pack a huge musical and emotional punch.

Music Feeds sat down with vocalist Grady and guitarist Dante to chat about their upcoming album and the steady rise of Anxious.

Music Feeds: Hey dudes! Thank you for taking the time to talk with us. For those being introduced to the band, tell us a bit about the dynamic of Anxious. How did the band start? And how does everyone’s role contribute to the songwriting dynamic in the band?

Grady: Yeah so the band started when me and Dante were in middle school or high school. I guess for me, it was early high school. And with the dynamic, I think everybody adds a lot –

Dante writes a lot of the music, I write some too. I write a lot of lyrics, Dante writes lyrics too.

We have Sam on bass, Johnny on drums and Tommy on guitar. And on this last record, it felt like a very collaborative process. You know, we were in the studio with everybody in one room, sort of hashing ideas out. And I think that was very different from the first record where it was me, Dante and Johnny mapping the whole thing out. But I really liked the collaborative process this time. It was really cool.

Dante: This is the first time we recorded with Tommy. So it was really cool to just have us all together, putting our heads together on this stuff.

MF: You’ve got your brand new record Bambi coming out and it’s been said that that name was an afterthought of what the band could have been called. So what does that name mean to you, as far as why it could have been for the band versus why you chose to name the album Bambi?

Grady: We were on tour sometime in the past year and a half, and I was sitting down looking at something. I didn’t read it, or see it, but I could see it in my head. And I liked how the name looked and how it sounded. I could just see it so perfectly. And I just kind of looked up and said, “Man, we should name the band Bambi. That’s a really cool band name.” And everyone’s like, “Yeah, no, that’s a cool name.” And then months later, as the record started coming together, and we were thinking about record titles, ‘Bambi’ just kept coming into the fold. And it kind of felt emblematic and symbolic of this record as a body of music, like this is the band that we want to be. It is the band that we could be.

Dante: ‘Bambi’ was just like this stroke of inspiration from Grady, and when he said it, my first thought was, “We should just change the band name right now.” But it’s really cool that the record ended up being called ‘Bambi’. I think it fits really well.

MF: There’s been quite a jump in success since the release of your earlier album Little Green House back in 2022 but what has changed in your approach, both on a personal level, and in the band dynamic going in to create Bambi?

Grady: Well, we wrote Little Green House in the pandemic. Which was this big tragedy for musicians in a lot of ways, but also was this unique asset in that it gave us a ton of time to write, and we had this entire record mapped out, planned out down to a T months before we recorded it. The big dynamic difference was, of course, with Bambi we were writing intermittently between tour and so it made the whole process feel just more opaque and a little bit hard to know exactly what it was going to look like or feel like going into the studio. So Bambi felt a little more ambiguous, as opposed to Little Green House.

MF: I’ve heard that Bambi has deep roots in hardcore and emo from the tri-state area. What bands and what albums would you say ‘pass the torch’, so to speak, to you when you were creating this latest album. Who do you want to spotlight and shout out as far as inspiration goes?

Grady: I found myself thinking about Jimmy Eat World and Death Cab For Cutie a lot. Those were two bands that I found myself really gravitating towards while we’re making this record.

Dante: I would say I was really influenced by Beach Boys for a lot of the germination of what we wanted this next record to be. I think when we really were putting the work in to put the songs together and turn them into what they were, I was really into The Smashing Pumpkins, which has always been one of my favourite bands but I had a real renaissance with them. Grady and I really listened to a lot of the self-titled Blink-182 record when we started to put together ideas that we wanted to put down on the record. And Animal Collective was probably my biggest influence for what we were going to do, which felt really weird, but I think I kind of wanted weird.

MF: The bands that you’ve named there, They’re all bands that have contributed to the experimentation within the genre, and the evolution of that emo sound in particular. Like Death Cab explore a lot of different sounds, as far as the alternative and emo genres go, and that self titled Blink album is especially experimental. With a band like yourselves continuing on the lineage of hardcore and emo rock music, how do you find the balance between evolving and experimenting while also sort of staying true to the roots? Is there room to experiment within the genre?

Dante: I think we’re pretty comfortable in what we like and what really moves us, as far as music goes and just art in general. And I think we’ve all really trusted our own judgment as to what always will work for us and what will always feel fun about what we do and what we get to write and where we can try new things and bring in different facets of ourselves and different facets of our taste in music to make things interesting and break from the binary.

Grady: I think as a band we try to spend not too much time focused on the question of, “is that what this band would do? or would this band not do that?” and I think we just try to be focused, always forward facing and do what feels honest and authentic for us. And when I think about the roots and values of punk and hardcore, I like to think about it as a vehicle for authenticity. And I think that’s what we do with Anxious, but I think what we create is just very intrinsically us, and I feel pretty free to grow and evolve and try and change things.

MF: What’s your favourite song from Bambi and why?

Dante: I think ‘Some Girls’ has been consistently my favorite song. It’s just a really different one for us that also feels so much like an Anxious song to me. It was a song that I have always wanted us to have the opportunity to write at some point. It also feels like something that we could have really screwed up, but I think it came out really excellently and I’m super proud of it. I also really like ‘Tell Me Why’, it was one of the first ideas for the record, and it felt like one of the most natural ones. And I don’t think about it a lot, but lately when I’ve been asked this, I feel like I haven’t given it enough attention. So that’s another one of my favorites.

Grady: I think for me, I’d say the last song on the record ‘I’ll Be Around’. It’s kind of this triumphant song on the record, and it’s just about enduring friendship. And I think the song just feels like this loud, booming, sort of slower rock song which feels like something we haven’t really done before. It’s pretty noisy too, which I like. It just tonally and lyrically, to me, feels like such a great note to end the record on. So that’s probably my pick.

MF: So next month, you’ve got a massive tour around the US, a headline tour with Ultra Q and Stateside, along with some European dates with Gel later on this year. Have you got any plans to come to Australia?

Grady: Yeah, we should be there at the top of 2026 hopefully. Fingers crossed. So that’s exciting.

Dante: Yeah, I’m excited to come back.

MF: You’ve been to Australia before?

Grady: Yeah, we were there with Drain two Christmases ago.

MF: What did you think of your first time in Australia?

Grady: First time in Australia was great. It was a blast. Shows were cool. Chilling with Drain was awesome. I mean, just so unreal, such a beautiful place and you see all the cities, the driving in between, it’s great.

MF: What sorts of preparation goes into a headline tour, like the one you have next month? Have you got any special surprises for the headline shows that you want to let us in on?

Grady: Pyrotechnics, backup dancers, Crazy light show.

MF: Costume changes?

Grady: Yeah, costume changes. We actually have a spinning drum cage! (Laughs). No, I don’t know. A lot of practicing. A lot of playing the songs, a lot of learning the songs. There’s some songs that I should know the lyrics better than I do so I’ve got to snap into it for this last month countdown.

Dante: Yeah, I’ve got to get in shape. I’ve been eating candy every day, and I’m planning to go back to Connecticut next week and do some Rocky Balboa shit.

MF: Have there been arguments about the setlist yet?

Grady: We haven’t argued about the set list yet, because we haven’t started talking about it yet. I’m sure we will when we all reconvene and start practicing next week, but so far I get to relish in just us all being happy about the record right now.

Dante: Grady is pretty good about the set list, and then I think we’re all pretty good editors.

Grady: Haha yeah I guess so. I don’t know. I tend to be like, “here’s what I think is a good idea.” And then everybody says yes or no.

MF: Finally, are there any Australian bands that you’re currently jamming to at the moment, or that are in your rotation or playlists?

Dante: Well, one of my most foundational inspirations, and like a pretty big inspiration for Anxious a lot of times, is Trophy Eyes. So they’ll always be on rotation in my heart.

Grady: Yeah, there are several bands I can’t get enough of. There’s a band called Armlock that they just signed to Run For Cover, our label. And I just think they’re incredible. They have these really quiet, intimate, weird guitar layered pop songs, and they’re so pretty. I mean, we got put on to them by our friend Zach while we were on tour in Australia two years ago, and have just been obsessed since.

Also, they’re an older band but there’s a band called Glide from Australia. I think they’re really great. I think the song is called ‘Why You Asking?’ And I’ve always really liked that record. Oh and I’ve also been jamming to a lot of Body Jar this past fall.