Anxiety Club Announce Release Date for ‘Old Dreams’ Album and Single

18 August 2022
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Anxiety Club Announce Release Date For 'old Dreams' Album And Single

Wellington/Poneke band Anxiety Club are thrilled to announce that their debut album Old Dreams will be released on streaming services on Friday 16 September 2022. Fans will be able to purchase a digital copy via Bandcamp a week before it hits the streaming sites.

Completing the trilogy of pre-album singles, the album’s title track will be released as a single on 2 September.

Old Dreams (the song) is a delicate piano ballad. The deliberately lo-fi recording captures not only lead-singer Kev Fitzsimon’s grandmother’s piano, but also all the creaks and background noises of real life. The song – which falls somewhere between Bends-era Radiohead, Nils Frahm and Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters – is a meditation on letting go of dreams that belong to different – younger – versions of ourselves. There is beauty in it’s restraint and Fitzsimon’s emotive vocal will haunt you for some time after the final chords fade into the ether. Anxiety Club’s most honest and mature song to date.

When the band releases Old Dreams (the album) in September it will be as much a musical statement as an act of defiance.  A year earlier as chief songwriter Kev Fitzsimons nursed a shoulder injury (that left him unable to play guitar for months) and contemplated the recent eviction from their rehearsal space – and the loss of their rhythm section to other cities – things were looking bleak. Instead of throwing in the towel or even rebuilding a band, they focused all their energies into completing a record that had been in the making for some time.

Recorded over the lockdown years, core members Fitzsimons and Clint Meech assembled an international team to help bring their (old) dream to life. The band includes Chris Armour (Miles Calder band) on guitars, Andrew Bain (Fur Patrol) on bass, LA-based beat-maker Zach Simao and singer Maygen Lacey (also in the US) who contributed to the lush, layered vocal arrangements.

Mixed by Londoner Will Donbavand (Dermot Kennedy), Old Dreams covers a bit of ground with it’s fragile piano ballads, dreamy synthscapes, dance anthems and decent helping of indie pop. Making a slight turn away from their guitar band roots – a choice driven by both design and circumstance – Anxiety Club fully embrace the more electronic section of their record collections here. Influences including Beach House, Bowie, Pulp, MGMT, Radiohead, The Phoenix Foundation, and Kraftwerk all reveal themselves at various times.

Thematically, the album navigates the choppy waters of adulthood.  How do we figure out who we are when the things that defined us start to fade? There is depth and maturity in these songs but, as always with Anxiety Club, the self-awareness and sense of fun is never too far away. 

She whispers “Take my hand baby to the middle of the club
We’ll dance till the break of dawn”
I say “You know that’s another five hours from now
I’m not sure if I can dance that long”

– Party All Night Long

At one point we even get a dial-up modem solo (Lonely Dancing) and a passive-aggressive AI fitness tracker bot (Espresso Martini).

But mostly what Old Dreams delivers is a set of carefully crafted songs that work together to serve a singular vision.  

Lead singles Carousel and Lonely Dancing are out now.

Anxiety Club debuted in 2017 with anthemic single Be Still.  Since then they have enjoyed critical success with the Black Heart and Francine EPs, toured their home country of New Zealand (inc. co-headlining shows with Miles Calder, Adam Hattaway, Milly Tabek & The Miltones), had a cult Student Radio hit with Ginger in the Summer, graced summer festival stages (inc. Coastella, Festival of Lights) and recorded a number of memorable live-to-airs for Radio NZ.

Those release dates again:
Old Dreams Single: 2-Sep
Old Dreams Album available on Bandcamp: 9-Sep
Old Dreams Album Streaming Everywhere: 16-Sep

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