Bambi - Anxious: Review

Review by Lavender:

Anxious are a Connecticut band that broke through a few years ago after generating tons of regional buzz with a strong debut album Little Green House. Thanks to publications like Brooklyn Vegan I was a pretty early adopter of the band and their debut lived up to a lot of my expectations and seamlessly blended together styles of hardcore, emo, punk, and pop punk. It's for that reason that I was both excited by and invested in the bands future and what I hoped would be development. Instead, a rough collection of singles gave way to a second effort that robbed the band of nearly everything I once found so interesting about them. 

I hate writing negative reviews so let me at least start by sharing what I liked about the record, primarily that it gets off to a strong start. The opener "Never Said" is by far my favorite of the singles and my favorite song on the entire record. It's a raucous pop-punk breakup song with a catchy hook and snarling lyrics front to back. That leads into "Bambi's Theme" which is another right to the point pop-punky jam but one that's cut with loud pummeling drums and distant twinkly guitars that feels like a classic but still very successful combo. 

Throughout the rest of the album there are at least a few songs I think are okay. The one-two punch of "Tell Me Why" and "Sunder" lead into each other and are both decent even if they never really reach a point where they're all that catchy. I grew to enjoy some of the rougher vocals on the latter quite a bit. I do also think the finale "I'll Be Around" is a decent song but one that's far inferior to their debut album's spectacular closer and comes after a particularly painful sequence in the second half of the album. 

So let's talk about it, why does this record feel like such a tremendous downgrade from the band's debut. The first reason is a shift in genre to a full embrace of pop punk. I'll be the first to defend the genre, I like pop punk and have given positive reviews to albums that fit snugly within the genre as recently as last year. But when Anxious do it on this record the results are so utterly lifeless with very few catchy hooks or or angsty intensity to be found. 

That was the case on "Some Girls," the sugariest of the singles with these sentimental little cooked out refrains on the verses. It's actually one of the better examples as it's at least capable of summoning a little bit of muscle in the second half. Deep cuts with similar issues include "Head & Spine" which I want to like in principle with its dueling melodies and accusatory lyrics. Unfortunately, it all has absolutely no sonic impact whatsoever and the hook is one of the most lifeless I've heard this year. Additionally a few tracks later there's "Next Big Star" which may actually be the most flavorless song on the entire record. 

The other and arguably even bigger problem with the record is it's utterly cloying sentimentality. Pop punk albums are always angsty and emotional but both the lyrics and sonic presentation of this record feel like straight up Hallmark shit. "Counting Sheep" was the harbinger for this with sugary backing vocals that make me want to turn the song off the moment I hear them and kill any interest I have in the song or its story. 

A few album cuts do it even worse like "Audrey Go Away" which presents it in an agonizing slower and quieter format. Later on the record "Jacy" serves up some absolutely intolerable vocals, which is a shame because I can almost imagine the song being decent. 

Like I said, I hate doing negative reviews and even saying a phrase like "sophomore slump" feels shitty, but wow this feels like the EXACT definition of a sophomore slump. Not only does Anxious feel like they turned their back on some of the sonic ambitions that made them the most interesting, they also got worse as both songwriters and performers. I am certainly hoping for a return to form the next time the band emerges with new tracks, it's happened before. But Bambi feels like a very unfortunate bump in the road for a band that felt like they had upward momentum. 4/10

For more pop punk, check out my review of Neck Deep