Anyhow, the indie rock duo comprised of Nick Cianci and Dan Harris, let us into the creative process behind their self-titled debut album, the synergy of the Brooklyn music scene, and how music can support us through life’s “callousing milestones.”
Stream: ‘Anyhow’ – Anyhow
Music is a catalyst for connection, and Brooklyn-born band Anyhow are an embodiment of the magic that’s made when it brings us together.
The indie rock duo, comprised of Nick Cianci and Dan Harris, have the effortless kind of chemistry that fosters bold creative risks. With their fiery guitar riffs and soaring vocal lines, Anyhow have alchemized life’s aching moments into a dynamic album you’ll want to listen to on repeat.
With refreshingly honest lyrics underscored by lavish instrumentals, Anyhow is a passionate debut from a band that already sounds like they’ve been making music together for decades. In reality, the collaboration between Cianci and Harris evolved from a simple sit-down meeting with a couple of guitars.
“It’s literally just the purest form of passion project that turned into something larger,” says Harris. “It’s the magic of the seventh-grade hangout where you both find out you like the same thing.”
This magic comes to life on their album. Listening to Anyhow captures the intoxicating energy of being front and center at an intimate dive bar concert. You can feel the drums pulse alongside your heartbeat as you nod to the epic guitar lines. You forget about all the things that were bothering you before you stepped onto that sticky floor, and let yourself get swept away in the cathartic sounds that surround you.
Anyhow is an album that expertly unites honest lyrics with intentional musicianship.
Lyrically, Anyhow explores life’s crossroad moments: The times when you’re torn between the pain of holding on to what no longer fits you, and the terrifying unknown of releasing it. As you continue to immerse yourself into the rich instrumental landscape, you’ll hear a love affair play out between exceptional musicians and their craft.
In tracks like “Perfectly Honest,” the resigned and yearning voice of the narrator is underscored by audacious guitar lines and punchy drums, building momentum as desperation grows. “The angstier we are on the record, the louder the guitars are,” notes Cianci.
Other moments, like on the lead track “Anyhow Theme,” paint the sonic landscape more subtly. Soft, plucked guitar notes cradle the lyrics that introduce the themes of the album:
Show me something you love
And I’ll show you all that it’s made of
The great gardener has to know
what to clip and what to grow
towards something
Take me somewhere you’re free
A hidden room in your dreams
There’s a rapture in your heart
You believe but you can’t stop the questions
“It’s the idea of taking stock in your life, and knowing where to spend your time and how to how to be intentional with your time,” Cianci explains. “Clearing out the things that are that are holding you back from living the most fruitful life. The most intentional, examined life.”
Anyhow nod to the foundation laid by other musicians while creating their own unique sound.
You can hear the influence of many notable names echo through the album, from Elliott Smith to Bruce Springsteen to Fountains of Wayne. But Anyhow’s biggest influence might be their tight-knit corner of the Brooklyn music scene.
“I will live and die by the scene, because I think it’s the only reason why bands get off the ground,” Harris shares. “The first 100 people in the room to see a band are always other musicians, friends, and family. It’s never the screaming fans, if it even gets to that point.”
The contagious energy that sparks between musicians is palpable on tracks like “Pub Song.” Harris’s guitar line and Cianci’s banjo line ebb and flow together perfectly, creating a dynamic and energetic driving force that uplifts their longing harmonies.
On Anyhow, Cianci and Harris offer a masterclass on what can happen when you embrace freedom and release perfectionism.
This album is unapologetic and honest, showcasing the type of musical spontaneity that’s only possible after spending years honing your skills. Yet despite the obvious expertise that Cianci and Harris bring to the table (especially considering their respective experiences as members of Del Water Gap and Shallow Alcove), making this album was a lesson in overcoming perfectionism.
“Up until making this record, I was probably holding myself back a lot of ways, because I was trying to make something perfect,” Cianci shares. “In the process, I’d be missing so many other cool, exciting moments. The record really taught me to just keep going.”
Their partnership, as well as the support from producer and drummer Noah Pope, created an environment where everything was on the table: No lyric was too personal, no guitar take was too raunchy. The pure fun and passion that went into this album are part of what makes it so enjoyable to listen to.
“It’s a lot easier to avoid the pressure to be perfect when you’re in a room with good collaborators,” adds Harris.
The complimentary musical partnership of Cianci and Harris is the kismet magic behind Anyhow, but it doesn’t feel exclusionary.
If anything, they invite you to be part of the experience. After all, it’s all for the love of music. So, pull up a chair, grab whatever instrument is closest, and join in on the fun.
With more songs on the way and more headline concerts on the horizon, Anyhow are a band you want to keep up with. Read our conversation with Nick Cianci and Dan Harris below as they open up about their musical philosophy, their songwriting process, and the moments in your life they hope Anyhow will be the soundtrack for.
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:: stream/purchase Anyhow here ::
:: connect with Anyhow here ::
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Stream: ‘Anyhow’ – Anyhow
A CONVERSATION WITH ANYHOW
Atwood Magazine: You began by releasing some really exciting singles, like “My Calvins” and “Can't Move,” but this album feels like the full introduction to your band. What first impression do you hope new listeners have of Anyhow?
Dan Harris: The first impression I hope people get from Anyhow is that it sounds like something they haven’t heard before. I hope they like it! You don’t have to, but if you do, we really appreciate it. I hope that between each song, you’re like, “Wait, this is the same band?” I hope that there’s a sonic fingerprint, but it’s not immediately obvious until you get four or five songs in.
Nick Cianci: I’m going to copy and paste that answer, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. I would hope that they see it as a band with a sound, whether they like it or not.
The driving force behind Anyhow feels really similar to Atwood’s: It's all for the love of music. How does this philosophy shape your songwriting process?
Nick: We recorded this record with our friend Noah Pope. He produced it, played drums, and did all the cool synth stuff on the album. Noah has this studio, and he was really kind with his time. We never felt like we were on the clock, so it’s sort of embedded in the logistics of recording. It was already like, “Okay, this is just because we love music and we want to make music.”
We didn’t even really know we were making a full album until end of it. We just kept making it, and kept going and going. At one point at the end, I was like, “Wait, we should just keep recording. I don’t want it to end, this is so fun!” And then you guys were like, “No, we’ll just make another album!”
Dan: Nick really summed it up in a great way. I would say it’s literally just the purest form of passion project that turned into something larger. As Nick said, we started by trying to just make a couple singles or an EP, kind of just for sh*ts, just to hang out. It turned into something better because it was so natural. It’s the magic of the seventh-grade hangout where you both find out you like the same thing.
You recently played your first show together at Union Pool in Brooklyn, which is also where Anyhow was formed. What’s the music scene like in Brooklyn, and how has that community influenced your identity as a band?
Nick: We kind of met through, like, ten different people. I feel like I met and then re-met [Dan] so many times, and all these people are all musicians in different bands. I wouldn’t say we’re tapped into the whole music scene, you can’t be a part of it all. But we were kind of born of a little scene of just our friends.
I don’t know, Dan, if you agree, but I feel like scenes are like less genre-defined nowadays. We’re just sort of groups of friends who hang out. Maybe back in the day there was the punk scene, or the bedroom-pop scene, but I don’t know if anyone really sees it that way anymore.
Dan: I completely agree. I think we owe everything to the Brooklyn scene, and I think that the only common characteristic in the scene, so to speak, is people who are nice, and they live in roughly the same area. I will live and die by the scene, because I think it’s the only reason why bands get off the ground. The first 100 people in the room to see a band are always other musicians, friends, and family. It’s never the screaming fans, if it even gets to that point.
It’s one of those things that you get back what you put in. Nick and I really like investing our time and support into the scene, and we’ve felt it come back to us tenfold. It’s so rewarding. Every time I go to a show that’s one of our friends, I’m truly floored, like, “Wow, you guys are all so f***ing good at what you do.” The Brooklyn scene is amazing, and now it extends beyond Brooklyn because of the internet.
You’ve mentioned that the name Anyhow comes from a line in “Waltz #2” by Elliott Smith, and you can really hear this indie rock influence on tracks like “Magical Madge.” What other musical influences inspire you?
Nick: We’re kind of all over the map with our influences. It’s funny, because “Madge” actually started with my friend as an Elliott Smith parody. It was sort of a throw-away, and then I showed it to Dan and Noah, and they were like, “Let’s actually just record this,” and then wrote around it. Dan, I feel like we have a lot of crossover in influences.
Dan: Yeah, we definitely do.
Nick: There are a couple bands that you love that I have yet to really get into, and vice versa. What would you say are the pillars?
Dan: Nick and I bonded over Elliott Smith early on. We bonded over Father John Misty, we bonded over Pinegrove. One of the influences that kind of seeped into the record was the band Fountains of Wayne, known for their smash hit, “Stacy’s Mom.” But they should be known for their other records, because they’re great! That’s an example of one that I lean more towards. What do you think, Nick?
Nick: I think it’s funny, and we joke about it, because I have only recently started listening to Fountains of Wayne, and I love what I’ve been hearing. It’s also one of those things where so many people tell me that they hear them in our music, specifically in the songs that I’ve brought to you, even though I haven’t listened to them as much. So that’s been a funny realization.
Dan: It kind of makes sense to me, because one of your biggest inspirations, not to speak for you, is Bruce Springsteen. Nick has heavily introduced Bruce into my life. They’re both Jersey acts, and I feel like there’s a lot of crossover between New Jersey, New York, and Philly areas sonically. So that would be my hypothesis.
Nick: I know that you’re a Lucinda Williams fan, too. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is one of my all-time favorite albums, I was listening to it a lot.
Dan: Yeah, a lot of Lucinda Williams, which makes sense in our sound. The last band I’d love to shout is a local band from Nick’s area, The Districts. They’re a great band.
What moments in listeners’ lives do you feel like Anyhow could be the soundtrack for?
Dan: Late night summer drives is really what I’m hoping for. There’s a special kind of potent stupidity that occurs when a bunch of teenagers are in a car together, driving at night and singing songs that they love. I know that my music tastes were formed by those formative car rides. So, I hope everyone can blast it loud in a car. And be safe while doing it, please!
Nick: I think there’s a lot of yearning on the record. Most of the songs are, I wouldn’t say sad, but the narrator’s dealing with something. Instead of getting really mellow and slow with it, our instinct is to rock out. The angstier we are on the record, the louder the guitars are.
Dan: I agree. I don’t know if it’s bittersweet so much as it is the hard, callousing moments of life. Any milestone like that, like the ending of an era and the opening of a new one. I would hope that this could soundtrack any of those. Whether that be graduating school, leaving your first job, or leaving your relationship. Starting a new relationship. All of those callousing milestones. Things that stick with you.
The opening song, “Anyhow Theme,” really feels like it captures the essence of the album, both sonically and thematically. When in your writing process did this song fall?
Nick: We started messing with that probably halfway through the record. I had this little riff on the guitar that I’ve had for like six years, and I never knew how to put it into a song, that main melody. It kept coming back up, then I showed it to Dan. One of the most fun parts about working together is that we’ll just have a little idea, and the other person will riff off of it. It’s contagious and we go back and forth. The first time we started messing with that idea, we were like, “This feels like an intro.”
Dan: It took a while to finish properly, too. “Anyhow Theme” was basically just something we were kicking around, and once the other ten songs were done, we were like, “Here are the Easter egg moments. Here is how we introduce different themes.” That one was really cool. It was nice to have something that was baking long-term, from the start to end of the record.
Nick: Also shout out to our mixer, Caleb [Wright], who really tied that all together. He’s a huge part of the record and the way it sounds.
I wanted to specifically talk about the line: “The great gardener has to know / What to clip and what to grow towards something.” It feels like it could be the thesis of the entire album, with this pull between desperately holding on and accepting when it's time to let go. Where did that line come from?
Nick: I pulled the image from- this sounds so hoity-toity, but from an F. Scott Fitzgerald book, This Side of Paradise. There’s this really beautiful sentence, where everything’s worded so plain and simply. He said something about the “great gardener.” I assume he was talking about the universe, or some idea of a god, or even just yourself. Someone that is taking control of your destiny, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s the idea of taking stock in your life, and knowing where to spend your time and how to how to be intentional with your time. Clearing out the things that are that are holding you back from living the most fruitful life. The most intentional, examined life.
This album also showcases your technical versatility as musicians, especially when it comes to the rich guitar lines that underscore tracks like “Pub Song.” How does your recording process maintain this authentic, jam-session energy that's really present on the album?
Dan: We do a lot of it live. We do as much of the rhythm tracking as we can live, and I feel like that keeps the natural feel. “Pub Song” is actually a great example of that, because that was kind of written for fun, because we didn’t have an acoustic song on the record. Nick and I were just messing around on this 12-string and a banjo, and probably 80% of the song just happened in that one sitting, in an hour. We did the guitar and banjo live, together.
You've written a lot of really relatable and vulnerable lyrics for this album, with songs like “Daggers” and “The Breaker.” What about your collaboration creates a space where this vulnerability is possible?
Dan: I think it’s that Nick is one of my very close friends, and Noah is also one of my very close friends. They already know what’s happening in my life, so it’s easy to talk about.
Nick: Yeah. Those are both songs that [Dan] brought to the table, and I loved them from the first listen. It comes naturally to [Dan], I think, to be vulnerable in lyrics. It’s sometimes harder for me. A lot of the time, too, we would start out sessions with, “How’s life?” Sometimes we would just spend an hour talking about things going on in our lives. Kind of group therapy, in a way. That built in that sort of trust, so I never really felt like I was scared to show lyrics for a song, because I felt like that trust is there.
Dan: I feel like the hardest thing about lyrics is you pour your heart into them, and then there’s this fear that someone’s gonna hate it. Or worse, they’re gonna laugh at it and think it sucks. I never once felt that from Nick and Noah.
It’s funny that you bring up those two songs, because those were both written basically as throwaways. I do a lot of writing for fun, just because it feels good. “The Breaker” was one of the first songs that I brought to Nick. I was like, “It’s kind of simple. Maybe it sucks.” And Nick was like, “It doesn’t suck and it’s good, and we should do it.” Nick is the reason why all these songs got over the line to begin with. Nick is the better half of that song.
What do you hope listeners take away after listening to this album?
Nick: I would hope they’d be curious to see what we’re like live. We want to tour and we want to play more shows. We had such a fun time at our album release show. We had our friends playing, backing us, and it was just so much fun. We’re excited to dig into different ways we can bring these songs to life live.
What’s next for your band? Do you plan on doing more live shows and continuing to write together?
Dan: Hell yeah. A hard, resounding, yes. There’s rumblings of a second album. We’ve got an opening slot for our buddy Runnner on June 12th in Brooklyn, at Purgatory. Then just more headlines. We’re gonna play as much as we can, we just love playing live.
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:: stream/purchase Anyhow here ::
:: connect with Anyhow here ::
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© Gabe Drechsler
© Gabe Drechsler
Anyhow
an album by Anyhow
