Photo Credit: Alia Thomas
Anxious, a five-piece band hailing from Connecticut, have been making waves with their punk-rock bangers over the last couple of years, growing as artists and evolving their sound. On the last day of 2000trees, we caught up with them for a chat and a lot of laughs after their brilliant, sweaty, chaotic set.
This is your first time at 2000trees, so how have you found the general vibe of the festival so far? Have you spent much time going around?
Dante: We’re pretty washed from this whole tour, so I feel like we’ve been a little scattered. We’ve just been hanging out in this general area really, but I mean, it seems like a lot of fun. I love the camping. I wish I could be camping right now.
Grady: I mean, we’ve only been here for one day. We have not done our due diligence on 2000trees, but it has been a good vibe to the extent that we’ve experienced it.
You played the Axiom stage this morning. How was that for you guys?
Johnny: It was good. It was like a little chaotic for sure, but it was fun, and people seemed to be into it. There were people in beer costumes that, like, slowly broke down during the set and then they started throwing pieces of the costumes around. I guess they were just shedding their layers and then throwing them all around.
D: Were they beer before or after all my stuff broke?
Sam: They were beer during.
D: Yeah, that’s why I didn’t catch it.
S: Yeah I remember being like “oh no Dante’s stuff doesn’t work” and then I was like, “there’s beer guys! and now they’re throwing their lids at us” haha.
It looked like a lot of fun – they were clearly having a good time. This is your penultimate show on the EU/UK run. Do you have a personal preference of the smaller intimate shows or the bigger festival stages?
S: I don’t know. They’re both fun. They’re both a lot of fun, honestly. Tomorrow we’re going to go play in a record store in London that’s going to fit, like, 60 people in it, and that’ll be cool for its own reasons because everyone’s really close and right there, but I think we make the most out of our opportunities to play on a big stage. I think we all, like, hamming it up a little bit.
G: Yeah, but there’s pros and cons. A small intimate show, I feel like, is always what I prefer. But a big stage is always fun, too.
D: On a big stage, sometimes I’m like I’m not big enough for this stage haha.
S: Also, I’m never able to hear anything that’s going on on a big stage. Like, being in a small room is chaotic and difficult, too, but on a big stage, I’m like, I need my guys. Where’s my guys? All my guys are too far away, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on haha.
D: Yeah, a lot of this band survives off of kinship and camaraderie, and brotherhood.
You brought out your second album, Bambi, earlier this year. Was there a particular theme or concept for the album?
D: When we first even started thinking about writing new stuff, like halfway through COVID, after we had finished our first record, I was really into Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. So off the bat, my idea was like, how do we make a record like Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys? Obviously, it’s not like that, but to me, it’s like that.
S: Yeah, I just thought it was, like, more collaborative in the studio than it’s ever been, and I feel like also that things are changing over time with the band naturally. Me and Tommy joined the band later, so it’s been Dante and Grady for so long that it was kind of more natural for them to be the ones contributing the most. But it feels like over time, it’s kind of like everybody’s becoming integrated and we just play together more, and there’s more, like, trust and understanding. Also writing a record is really difficult, like, emotionally, to be that vulnerable in front of not only people that are very close to each other, like we are, but then also you have to think about the fact that there’s another person in the room recording it with you who you don’t know very well. And I think the new record, it just felt… It felt like everybody was on the same page as far as, you know, we just want to make something that is good instead of it being like, oh, I’ve got to get my part off. Everybody was very generous, and that’s not always easy to do. That was my favourite part.
Do you have a particular favourite song to play live?
G: I really like the second to last song, Jacy, and I like the last song [I’ll Be Around] off the new record. Those are probably two of my favourite songs, like, lyrically, thematically. Playing live, I always like playing Counting Sheep, which was the first single off the record.
Tommy: I really like Next Big Star. I think it’s super different sonically and energetically from anything else in the catalogue. I’m really stoked that it came out sounding so, like, epic and big. It sticks out like a sore thumb in a really good way, I think, and I wish we could have played it today because I like playing it in those bigger settings. I think it’s a lot of fun.
S: I like that the end of that song is so different on recording than how we play live.
D: The ending on recording is way too Beach Boys, so we just rock out. We turn on all the pedals and just go for it.
S: That’s the part that, if we’re having a really good set, that I get really emotional during.
T: I’m too busy trying to get my licks in, trying to get my part off during that to get emotional haha, but I’m sure if I wasn’t, I would get emotional during that too.
J: I think I’ll Be Around is my favorite song to play. I kind of wish we got to play that song more just because I feel like that’s the band that I think that we are, and I don’t think we’ve ever really wrote a song like that. I just think it’s such a special song.
D: I also really like playing I’ll Be Around. I don’t know if I play it very well, but it was fun to play when we were headlining in the spring. Right now, I really like playing Never Said, the first track on the record. That one’s just really cool to do.
How do you think your song-writing and creation process has evolved in the last couple of years since your debut album?
D: I think for this record, the songs happened in a much simpler way than the first time. I think when we wrote Little Green House, our first record, it was a lot of Grady, Johnny, and I in the beginning of COVID. Grady and I were just coming out of high school, and I think we were really trying to put everything that we wanted to put into our debut record onto that. And then this record was a lot more of finding the foundation of the songs and seeing what felt good for what would follow that up. Then I think a lot of the concrete ideas happened when we were in the studio and we made choices on what kind of song an idea was going to be. Was it going to be a softer song? Was it going to be a heavier song? Were we going to speed this one up? Or what was the speed we had it at? Did that feel like the right thing?…
G: I think the biggest difference is one of timeline. I think we were afforded such an insane luxury during the pandemic to have an endless amount of time to write and work and workshop and just spend time writing, as opposed to now having to balance tours and being busy and life outside of that. The timeline felt a lot more condensed, and it felt like a much more in-studio process as opposed to the last record, which felt like a meticulous amount of time spent outside the studio working on it.
We’ve got a couple of fun questions for you. If there was a movie made about the band, who would play each of you?
G: So for me, it would probably be somewhere of a mix between a Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale type, probably a little like Timothy Chalamet thrown in there.
S: You get compared to Brad Pitt in Fight Club all the time, just because of your body.
G: Okay, Brad Pitt body, Leonardo DiCaprio face, Timothy vibe…
S: I would say Marlon Brando level ability.
G: Yeah, Marlon Brando talent. I think that’s probably what it would be.
J: Who’s the guy from Dumb and Dumber? Jim Carrey? Yeah, I think I’d be Jim Carrey.
T: A hundred percent, haha.
D: It’s gonna be a creative choice, but one of us has to be played by The Rock.
T: Yeah, that’s you.
J: You’re definitely The Rock, but he’s walking around on his knees haha.
S: I’m going Harrison Ford just after Star Wars came out, when he started wearing a bunch of dope suits with polos underneath them instead of a dress shirt and a tie.
G: Not like a certain British actor?
S: Yo, fuck Grady Allen.
G: Harrison Ford‘s not crazy either haha.
T: I’m really drawing a blank.
D: If Sam can’t be Daniel Radcliffe, Tommy’s gonna be Daniel Radcliffe.
T: Okay yeah I think I’ll claim Daniel on it, but like, I think to contrast with The Rock, I’d want to cast him when he was like 11, like in the first Harry Potter movie. So one of us is like a big burly wrestler and the other one is like a tiny British kid haha.
Okay, if Anxious were a festival, what would it be like?
D: It’d be so weird.
S: You ever heard of 100 Demons? You ever heard of Hatebreed? Death Threat? It’s a lot of bands like that, and like, Fall of Troy.
T: There’d be lots of water that you could have. Whatever you wanted.
J: Unlimited water and air conditioning.
S: Air conditioning, water, and people that really love my band, and they’re fucking going crazy. They’re fucking jumping off the shit. They’re going crazy, because they just want to even catch a glimpse of me, and we would play all day long, and we would never get tired haha.
J: It would be a lot like Blissmas, but it would be Anxious instead.
S: Instead of pro wrestlers, it would be like fucking chess tournaments haha.
D: Gamers, like e-sports.
T: Simultaneous Fortnite Geoguessr tournament.
G: Warzone 1v1s instead of a pit.
S: It would be catered by a really nice Italian restaurant.
T: Yeah Dante’s Dad would cook for it.
D: There’d be a lot of kitchen sink noise music.
S: Yeah, basically just people who would literally do fucking anything for me, and they’re like my puppets, and they would jump off shit and do backflips off shit. And Grady would be like, “yo go get up here” And everybody would be going fucking insane.
T: We would hold it somewhere crazy. We would hold it in like Lapland in Finland where you get the northern lights and shit.
S: But actually it’s in Connecticut still.
T: I mean, yo, you might be in Lapland right now, but for the next 35 minutes you’re in Connecticut, and we’re still playing a 35 minute show.
S: Because we’re all really tired haha.
G: Yeah, so it’ll probably be something like that. Just something chill…
Okay, so last question. What is next for Anxious? What is coming up for you? What can we expect from you?
G: We have a really busy year. We’re going to Japan for the second time. Then we’re coming back over here with Basement, Midrift, and Dynamite. Then we’ll go back to the States and do a really long tour with Hot Mulligan, Drug Church, and Arm’s Length, and then we’re going to come back here one more time for a tour that hasn’t been announced yet – that’s an exclusive, you heard it here first.
Interview by: Alia Thomas
