The Connecticut quintet’s debut is the work of pop-punk professionals, modeled after the genre’s mainstream breakthroughs in the early 2000s.
Anxious have been variously described as hardcore, pop-punk, and emo, but they’re also rooted in the classic rock of their parents’ generation: “My dad would play me a lot of early aughts power pop/indie music…like Fountains of Wayne and Death Cab for Cutie,” 19-year-old guitarist Dante Melucci revealed in a recent interview. It’s a frankly mind-blowing statement until some quick math confirms that “Radiation Vibe” and “A Movie Script Ending” are equidistant from today as they are from Led Zeppelin IV and The Wall. Even if none of the bands that Melucci and the rest of Anxious grew up on are liable to crack any 4th of July marathon rock block, “classic rock” still feels like an accurate appraisal of the influences on their debut, Little Green House: Their heroes can be found in the back catalog of their new label Run for Cover, but the bands that cracked MTV2 are gods.
The quintet threw themselves in “the next Title Fight” royal rumble with 2019’s Never Better, an EP of emotive, melodic, and slyly ambitious hardcore. But they have since cleared the lane for One Step Closer, the Wilkes-Barre straight edge crew that shares two members with Anxious and likewise followed the Triple B-to-Run for Cover pipeline. OSC frontman Ryan Savitski and rhythm guitarist Grady Allen trade roles on Little Green House, and Anxious wisely cater toward Allen’s cleaner, more approachable vocals, creating as much distinction as possible between the two acts without turning them into incompatible touring partners.
As opposed to the raw, point-and-shout melodic hardcore of Never Better, Little Green House is the work of pop-punk professionals, craft and sophistication smuggled in through unexpected countermelodies and actual harmonies—not just two vocalists singing in vaguely related overtones. The band gives most of the credit on that front to Melucci, who’s legitimately born for this shit: At 14, he performed on Broadway as Freddy Hamilton in School of Rock: The Musical. There’s a little vocal melisma at the end of “Growing Up Song” that’s kind of a throwaway joke but also kind of stunning within a pop-punk track called “Growing Up Song.” Put it together with the wholesome “In April” video, and it’s not far-fetched to think of them as a boy band.
Chris Teti of the World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die produces, as Mark Trombino might have in 2001—a post-hardcore veteran sympathetic to bands reaching toward the mainstream. Tambourines linger deep in the mix, and acoustic guitars emerge during the bridges: evidence of Anxious working with a budget and seeing Little Green House as something distinct from their live show. It’s sleek but not slick—as with TWIABP, Teti cranks the rhythm section, emphasizing a velocity and propulsion that becomes integral to the songwriting. “In April” or “Call From You” would probably hold up if they were covered in any other genre, but Anxious’ strident urgency reminds why people gravitate towards this style of music for melodic thrills.
By “this style of music,” think Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American: a paragon of well-proportioned, immaculately sequenced emo records that could pass for pure pop-rock. Little Green House seems to explicitly follow their model: Start at a full sprint, alternate jangling chords with palm-muted chunk, throw in just enough screaming to come across as both bashful and brash. In their brief existence as a touring band, Anxious have opened for both Boston hardcore titans Have Heart and pop-punk defenders Knuckle Puck, and “Your One Way Street” ensures that they’ll win over either crowd from the jump. From that point, Anxious deescalate toward the mid-album acoustic ballad, immediately reestablish momentum with the thrashiest songs, and come down with a five-minute power ballad with a featured guest vocalist.
That power ballad, the closing duet “You When You’re Gone,” might be better described as “Stella Branstool ft. Anxious.” After the breathtaking Side B medley that aligns their backgrounds in pop-punk and musical theater, Anxious spend five minutes in a complete remodel: The tempo is dialed down to a mall-walking pace, Allen’s vocals are relegated to textural trimming, and the guitars glimmer, twist, and turn. It’s an interesting show of range within the context of Little Green House, but in the broader scope of indie rock, Anxious have transformed into a solid band among many that have taken a poppier approach to templates set by Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy. Ironically, if Anxious truly wanted to have a Bleed American-type success in 2022, all of Little Green House would’ve sounded like “You When You’re Gone.”
That may very well happen on LP2: Anxious have anointed “You When You’re Gone” as the best song on Little Green House, which gives more insight into their view of growth than the one literally titled “Growing Up Song.” Like many albums of this age, Little Green House is finally seeing release after being completed for nearly a year and a half, an eternity for a pop-punk band with actual teens in it. Even before “You When You’re Gone,” their enthusiasm for melodic hardcore has been tempered by a belief that more exists beyond its quintessential lyrical themes: wishing some friends could stay the same, wishing some friends could be more than friends, wishing some friends would just fade out of view. Anxious may get there in time; for now, they’re in the middle of the ride.
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