Will This Be the Year for Annuals?

photo by Autumn De Wilde

Hometown: Raleigh, N.C.
Album: Wet Zoo EP, and a forthcoming album, title TBD
Band Members [L-R]: Zack Oden, Anna Spence, Adam Baker, Nick Radford, Kenny Florence, Mike Robinson
For Fans Of: Bright Eyes, Flaming Lips, My Morning Jacket

It might seem odd to regard a modestly successful band like Annuals as “emergent,” but the North Carolina collective’s 2006 debut, Be He Me, was more promising than definitive. Sure, its shaggy indie rock lit up a fickle blog world notorious for cycles of hype and backlash. And the single “Brother” received near-unanimous praise. Annuals even wound up playing Conan. But their album as a whole received a mixed reception. “If we’d known it was going to catch on, we’d have taken more care with the sound quality,” guitarist Kenny Florence says at the band’s studio, a tidy basement tucked away in a tony Raleigh neighborhood. As Annuals near the release of their still-untitled follow-up, they’re aware of the pressure to make good, which primary songwriter Adam Baker says has propelled their songwriting to greater heights. “We love our studio,” he says, “but we’ve also had the opportunity to work in great studios around North Carolina, so we’re a lot happier with the sound quality this time. On the last record, when we wanted to sound huge, we had to just keep overdubbing. This time, we’ve been able to emphasize melodies without overdoing them.” For a sneak peak at the new Annuals sound, listeners can check out Wet Zoo, a recent split EP with Sunfold (a rearranged version of Annuals led by Florence), which offers a more streamlined take on the ensemble’s incandescent indie rock. Baker contends that the main Annuals song from the EP—a glowing, jangling tune called “Sore”—is the “best representation of what the new album will be like.” The track suggests that Annuals have indeed resolved their sound issues, but only time will tell if the album will definitively end this ambitious, commercially savvy young band’s tenure as “blog-rockers.” For now, they remain an intriguing question mark in American indie rock.