Words by Zandra Ruiz
Photos by Davis Peer
Annuals are a band you never forget. I saw them for the first time at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on June 19th. Before they even started playing, I noticed the members drift through the growing crowd, and I wondered who they were. They were not visibly different from anyone else there, but they walked with presence, with a calm confidence, as if they knew, in ten short minutes, the stage would be theirs. The crowd would be theirs.
And we were.
Lead singer Adam Baker’s strident vocals are smooth the way you want your own voice to be smooth, loud the way you want to be loud. The urge to sing with him, to fill your lungs with air and belt his words until you’re breathless, is impossible to fight. You watch keyboardist Anna Spence lose herself in the music, caught in raptures of the red and gold light, and you want to melt with her into every key she plays. The beat, sometimes doubled or tripled, surges through your feet, bounces along your ribs, and it feels like your heart is out of control, taken right out of your chest, pumped through the air and thrown back at you.
Once you hear Annuals do indie-pop, you want every band to do indie-pop like them--you want every band to have as much vigor, as much energy and passion as they do.
They have just finished an eastern tour with What Laura Says, Thinks, and Feels and The Most Serene Republic, both captivating and entertaining live bands.
More photos below.
