Anthony Family Released New Single And Video “101 North”

Respected musician Anthony Anzaldo, announces his new musical project Anthony Family and signs to Pure Noise Records.

Over the years, his band Ceremony have explored in hardcore, post-punk, indie rock, new wave, and beyond. For Anzaldo, in 2024, highly personal, emotionally complex sophisti-pop is the order of the day with the release of his debut single 101 North is a fascinating (re)introduction to Anzaldo as an artist on his own terms. 

“Thirty years ago, if you would have told me that I was going to be able to write a song like this, I would have said, ‘I cannot wait to be 30 years older,’” Anzaldo says. “It’s a song that I’ve been wanting to write my whole life — and finally being able to have the ability and mind to pull it off, that’s the success.”

In tracing Anthony Family’s DNA, if you were to point to Howard Jones, Prefab Sprout, or Yazoo, you’d be on the right track. Ditto the Blue Nile, Scritti Politti — or his all-time hero, Prince. (“I think about him every day in my life,” Anzaldo says of the Purple One. “It’s so beyond that, He doesn’t even consciously register as an influence.”

Anzaldo has been writing Anthony Family for years; he had a nascent blueprint for the album in mind for almost a decade. He recorded it over the span of a year, whenever he was able to get in a studio — “until I felt like I had a cohesive body of work that was reflecting where I’m at and how I feel.” 

Which harkens back to Anzaldo’s core dictum making music: “What do I want from this song? What does this song want from me? What do I want you to feel when you hear this song?” he says. “And will that feeling be conveyed best through full band, synth, guitar, everything? Would that feeling be best with just meeting guitar? Or would that feeling be best over the span of seven minutes with a lot of space, you know?

“The process for every tune is different; getting to the destination is always different.” And it’s that destination that matters: the station of the human heart, and Anzaldo’s beats deeper than most. Meet the family.