But whereas Little Green House had enough grit to warrant comparisons to Title Fight and Rival Schools, the press materials for Bambi point critics to Third Eye Blind, Blink-182’s self-titled, the diamond-cut clarity of Jimmy Eat World, and the softer side of Smashing Pumpkins (at least to this 40-something dude, “Next Big Star” really does sound like if “Galapagos” was a Bleed American B-side). If it wasn’t for Dante Melucci’s gruff backing vocals or the involvement of Run For Cover, there’d be no reason to mention hardcore in the first place.
So Anxious may very well take the leap, but Allen and Melucci are trying to find solid footing as young adults. While Allen tends to his studies at BC, Melucci recently moved to Philadelphia to do extremely 22-year old things: play in a band, work at a coffee shop, get really into Animal Collective and Bukowski.
“I’m just like him, I just work a sh*tty job and f*ck off for the whole day,” Melucci jokes, taking my call after struggling to find a 30-minute break from his barista gig. It’s the day after the Eagles won the Super Bowl, so he’s basically an essential worker.
The distinction between the two in 2025 is striking; For most of Anxious’ existence, Allen played the CEO role, writing the bulk of the songs, booking the shows, and keeping practice schedules while cycling through a small gym class worth of former bandmates. Melucci, two years his junior, also saw Allen as an older brother figure. The two adolescents initially bonded over — what else? — Blink-182, before Allen introduced him to hardcore music and hardcore ethics. Melucci joined as Anxious’ drummer at age 14, having originally honed his chops playing Freddy in the Broadway performance of School Of Rock; “It’s not really something I talk about unless it comes up,” Melucci notes, explaining that his truest teenage self was “really angsty and angry all the time.”
Within two years, Promo 2019 and Never Better were released on Triple B and the momentum continued despite the pandemic — Anxious opened for The Wonder Years, booked festivals, received positive reviews in mainstream publications, and toured through Europe and Japan. Signing to Run For Cover “was a dream come true,” and Allen was getting paid to hang out with his friends. But he chafed against the expectations of leadership and interpersonal management as the reality of Anxious as a business started to emerge, albeit a business where everyone sleeps in the same hotel room at the end of the workday.
Allen got a preview of what to expect while playing in One Step Closer, the Scranton-based hardcore bruisers that had a nearly identical career arc to Anxious several months in advance: being hailed as “the next Title Fight,” jumping from Triple B to Run For Cover to release their first LP. OSC frontman Ryan Savitski played guitar and contributed backup vocals to Little Green House, while Allen held a similar role on the former’s 2021 debut This Place You Know.
The two bands naturally, and regularly, toured together, but a rift would become inevitable as each one’s success put greater demands on its members. Anxious blinked first, deciding that Savitski wasn’t in a position to juggle both of his roles. It was a heartbreaking call for Allen, knowing that Savitski often viewed Anxious as a safe haven from the more contentious interband dynamic of his main gig. One Step Closer soon responded in kind — “I was not kicked out of One Step Closer, but I was not invited to come back,” Allen shrugs.
All of that bolstered Allen’s encroaching disillusion with the ultimatums and binaries of hardcore — in short, the belief that you’re completely in or completely out. And yet, he soon discovered that his own assumptions about a life in hardcore were just as based in dogma rather than reality.
While he was considering the future of Anxious, Allen leaned on the elder statesmen for guidance. Patrick Flynn is a god to New England hardcore kids and a Mr. Flynn to others; He can play “the biggest hardcore show ever” to 10,000 kids in a Worcester parking lot and return to his day job as a high school history teacher months later.
“When I was in school, I really wanted to be doing the band and when I was in the band, I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m over this, I want to be back in school,'” Allen recalls being told, the point being that, “existing in different spaces doesn’t create a consistent satisfaction, but they can fuel each other.”
Yet, while it’s understandable for fellow artists to empathize, Allen didn’t truly feel comfortable taking a step back until he spoke to his bosses at Run For Cover, the people who stand to gain the most from a second Anxious album.
“These [are] people who have invested money and energy and after one record, I’m going ‘I don’t know if I want this,'” Allen remembers. “They were very understanding and delivered a similar message of, ‘you know this doesn’t have to be all that you are.'”
Allen took that advice to heart, perhaps in the most literal way possible — along with Flynn, he’s now the second Boston College history major on Run For Cover. Though the strained relationship between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt served as inspiration for the ebullient power-pop of “Jacy,” don’t expect The Monitor any time soon. While Allen is drawn to the small moments of humanity underlying Great Events, his academic path was also one borne of practicality — “I’ve been told by the professors, ‘I’ve never met somebody who’s so bad at math or science.'”
In a role reversal of their earliest days, Melucci became the one “squeezing harder on the band and feeling like it had to be everything,” while Allen harbored simmering ambivalence. “I love getting to do music, I love getting paid to go on tour however much or little that is. And it was difficult because I felt like [Grady] wanted the opposite.”
Even in his previous supporting role, Melucci wrote with the main intention of impressing his discerning co-vocalist; With Bambi, the band’s life was riding on him meeting that goal. Though his voice is rawer and rougher than Allen’s, Melucci brought in the more artful sonic flourishes — in an example of classic emo-blockbuster sequencing, Melucci drops a mid-album, symphonic ballad laced with falsetto, a tribute to his age-appropriate fixation on Pet Sounds. The billowy summer jam “Some Girls” isn’t a reference to the Rolling Stones, but rather a convoluted reference to Animal Collective’s biggest hit (it’s a long story).
Squint a certain way and Bambi is a meta concept album, a chance for Allen to rewrite his own history: While scrolling through old phone memos in a hotel room, he announced, “we should’ve named the band Bambi,” though I imagine they’d probably end up with Anxious anyways after a Disney cease and desist. The revved-up opener “Never Said” is Allen’s kiss off to sanctimonious scenesters, a theme that Anxious revisits on deceptively chipper singles “Head & Spine” and “Counting Sheep.” But the real story is embodied in the closing, while the closing “I’ll Be Around” can be read as Melucci and Allen reaffirming their friendship within a newly democratic songwriting dynamic that balances the latter’s directness with the former’s more abstract and evocative lyricism. Even if every song is, in its own way, about Anxious growing up, they’re not going to write anything as literal as “Growing Up Song” anymore.
“I think I learned a lesson about letting things develop into whatever they become, as opposed to setting specific goals,” Allen explains, dropping the anxiety of being Anxious to become the band they’re meant to be.
Bambi is out now via Run For Cover. Find more information here.
