Over the past two decades, Anamanaguchi have built their reputation on video games—both soundtracking them and mining the chiptune sounds of the music from early-console games’ OSTs for an overstimulating sound that recreates the imagery of much newer games. Yet for their third proper album, Anyway, the group’s aesthetic went through a software update that pulled them out of the digital realm and into the physical. Into the American Football house, to be exact.
Recorded in the famed structure in Urbana, Illinois gracing the cover of the emo band’s self-titled debut, Anamanaguchi were intentional about congregating in a physical space rather than collaborating over the internet for this album in order to ensure a tactile feel to these songs. The tracks were then (physically, by all four band members) taken to Upstate New York where producer Dave Fridmann helped set the project to tape. There’s still a bitpop feel creating a foundation on many of the record’s tracks, but ultimately Anyway serves as an uncharacteristic foray into analog pop-punk—a soundtrack of four friends hanging out IRL rather than over headsets.
Given the album’s unique backstory, we asked all four members of Anamanaguchi to share a bit about the non-musical sources of inspiration for these songs, which range from the online spaces that literally led them to the sounds of Anyway to the physical ones that clearly influenced the record’s reckless speed, to the transformational ones that mirror the album’s new outlook. Stream Anyway (out now via Polyvinyl) and read on for their words below.
PETER BERKMAN
Stairs
I used to take stairs for granted—growing up in the New York suburbs, almost all my friends’ houses had them. Living in New York, almost everybody lives upstairs. I live in Dallas now and most houses don’t have stairs. Living, playing, writing, and sleeping in the American Football house gave me a huge appreciation for the separation in life that stairs bring. It’s time for work, or it’s time for bed. While going up the stairs, you can feel yourself transforming from somebody getting things done to somebody getting refreshed. The same was true at Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York, where we recorded the album—it’s a house Dave Fridmann put together for the purpose of making music projects. We’d work from noon to 10 p.m. everyday, then it was time to go upstairs and think about everything you’ve done, and everything else. When you go back downstairs, the mission begins again!
Search engines
The world has changed a lot from the one we were born into (we were all born in the late 1980s). The biggest transformation was when TVs were replaced by computers, and the most different possible thing to a fantasy box is a memory box. The ability to seek out with exact precision is a power that can be used in lots of ways—all of them inspired the feelings explored on this album. A search engine can be used to target, surveil, and attack extremely specific things and people. A search engine can also be used to give a concrete name to something that inspired you, to bring you closer to understanding and knowing something that you love. Anyway was something of an Ancestry.com experiment for our relationship with rock music. The search engine isn’t musical gear itself, but it helped us to track down all the hyper-specific things that make this album what it is: vintage amps found on Facebook Marketplace, vintage speakers found on eBay (turned out the seller knew Dave Fridmann personally), an excellent studio nearby in Dallas I never knew existed, which turned out to be the perfect place to cut vocals. Anamanaguchi was built on search engines.
ARY WARNAAR
Demolition derbies
Going to your local demolition derby shares a lot of the vibe we put into this record. You can watch crazy videos on your phone all day, but none of it will hit like the raw sound/power of crashing vehicles, the strong smells of gas and burning coolant, kids screaming in excitement—the being-there-ness of it all. Demo derbies feel like going to punk house shows with loud amps, no rules, mosh pit, a raw fun energy that can’t really be replicated...and that also, tragically, represent a vibe that’s harder and harder to find. Race tracks and DIY spaces alike are closing all the time, and we gotta preserve the ones still doing it for the love of the game!
For us, tapping into that energy was writing and recording this record all together. Capturing a raw performance, a live energy in the room—not impersonating it. Fun fact: We mixed this record over two weeks in Western New York, basically on Lake Eerie, and we had one day off. I used that one day to drive all the way to the other side of the state, on the Massachusetts border, to go to my favorite local demo derby, The Eve of Destruction, in West Lebanon, New York.
LUKE SILAS
Fighting games
I love video games a lot and always have, but over the past several years my attachment to the fighting game community has grown much deeper in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I love the feeling of practicing drums, and in the past several years have begun cultivating a practice around meditation, with a surprising deal of overlap between them where effort is placed and the type of reward received. And as I’ve become more engaged in practicing games like Tekken or Smash Bros, I find myself applying lots of the same practices as these other major dedications in my life: don’t tilt, don’t be lazy, ask the right questions to find the right answers, be comfortable with growth over a long period of time, and, most importantly, have fun with other people! As we got ready to track on tape for the first time, I worked hard to be as calm and ready as possible, practicing not just execution but trying to stay flexible and adaptable, and looking forward to jamming with my best friends. The lessons I’ve taken from the FGC [fighting game community] have really added to my musicianship and applied to the making of Anyway, and it feels great to join my passions in such direct ways.
JAMES DEVITO
Fun glasses/hats/jackets
I bought these sunglasses from a friend’s store called Pretty Snake in Providence. They’re the old school round sunglasses with spider holograms on them. If you wear them for too long you get a headache, because you can see the hologram—but that’s not the point. The point is you feel fun in them. I wore them for a bit in the “Darcie” video. When we were recording vocals in Dallas at Valve Studios, we had about one hour left in the day to do the majority of my background vocals and adlibs. I threw on those puppies and got ripping. Wearing something like that, even if it may look dumb, can be all the hype you need.
Similarly, there was more background vocals to be done at Tarbox Studios during mixing. Luke and I were struggling with how to approach certain sections. Then it dawned on me that we had some very special [redacted] leather jackets in the house. Sitting on the couch around a mic, we’d hit record and start riffing while Pete and Ary watched from across the room, laughing and giving input. Admittedly we probably only ended up using a third of what we recorded, but we got exactly what we needed. I hope that vibe comes across on the record. I guess I didn’t mention a fun hat, but I look forward to finding one while on tour this September/October.
