The Anniversary

"Indie rock has never been so hot." - WIRED

Although there’s a certain fairytale aspect to The Anniversary’s story, success did not greet them overnight. Singer/guitarist Justin Roelofs, singer/guitarist Josh Berwanger and keyboardist/vocalist Adrianne Verhoeven started playing as The Broadcast in a Kansas City suburb in the mid-’90s. It wasn’t until January 1997 that the solidified quintet now known as The Anniversary - which had relocated to Lawrence, KS, and included James David on bass and Christian "Janko" Jankowski on drums - finally entered a studio and recorded their first proper demos with The Pulsars’ Dave Trumfio at Kingsize Sound Lab in Chicago. The group played shows around Lawrence and attracted a small fanbase that included old KC acquaintances Matthew Pryor and Rob Pope from The Get Up Kids, who were on the verge of forming Heroes & Villains under the Vagrant umbrella. When Pryor and Pope heard that The Anniversary were thinking about releasing an EP on a small label out of Kansas City, they sat Roelofs and Berwanger down and told them to wait for their Vagrant Records imprint deal to go through. Once it did, The Anniversary headed back to Kingsize in July 1999 to record Designing A Nervous Breakdown which was arguably one of the best albums released that year.

The Anniversary returned to Kansas at the beginning of this year and promptly began writing songs for their sophomore LP. The group continued to evolve and embraced the challenge of changing the definition of what an Anniversary song could be. Anyone who picked up their post-Nervous Breakdown seven-inches (including a split with Hot Rod Circuit and their contribution to the Sub Pop Singles Club) or heard the eight-and-a-half-minute "I Believe That The End Of The Reign Of Terror Is Soon Near" on last year’s Another Year On The Streets Vagrant Records compilation were well aware that the band was experimenting with new sounds, though it was unclear how all these ideas would come together to make for another memorable record.

Well, the heavens have opened up and the 11-track, 47-minute Your Majesty has finally descended upon us, and suddenly everything makes sense again. Recorded by Doug Boehm (Guided By Voices, Elliott Smith, Celine Dion) and produced by Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith, Saves The Day) at Sonora Recorders in the Los Angeles, Your Majesty has ditched the emo rhythms and most of the New Wave keys in favor of a slower, more deliberate classic pop/rock attack that gives the songs room to breathe.

"If you listen to our first record, with the records that come out and are called ‘emo,’ our record seemed to fit in that category just fine," admits Roelofs. "But if you listen to Your Majesty and had no history of our band, I doubt hardly anyone would say it’s like an emo record. I just think we’ve progressed a lot on this record."