After a few years of label drama, leaked tracks, and constant revision, the follow-up to Norwegian electro-pop princess Annie’s 2004 debut album, Anniemal, has finally dropped, and hot damn — I’m surprised to say that it’s going to top my personal best of the year list. Annie’s first album was a sweet, funky mélange of ’80s synth-pop, house- and electro-inspired club beats, and some of the catchiest pop hooks I’d heard in a long time from an artist working in such sounds. There was a reason that one of the record’s most popular songs was called “Chewing Gum;” the tunes stuck to the bottom of both your brain and your shoe while you danced yourself into a sweat.
Annie got signed to Island Records sometime in 2007, and her next album was originally set to come out the following year. She had a few singles released, made videos, and tried to work the major-label machinery. It never clicked, the record was delayed countless times, and before a full-length ever emerged, Annie left Island, taking her masters with her. She recorded a handful of new songs, dropped a few of the old ones (including ALL of the singles which Island issued — though those are included on the bonus disc of the 2CD version of the album), and tweaked the mixes on what remained from the old version of the record. In all honesty, this new version of the album is a vast improvement over the original, from the cover art to the sequence to the tunes themselves, which are filled with confidence and bold, brash pop moves. And you get the impression listening to this record that Annie knows that she’s hanging on by the seat of her pants in terms of expectations and reception in a total fly or die scenario, yet at the same time she seems in absolute control of her powers. The songs here are bouncy and club-ready, yet there’s a dark undercurrent hiding beneath many of them that illustrates more explicitly her failed liaison with the bigwigs, and perhaps as a result illustrates the ingredient that was missing from the earlier version of the album.
Then there are the songs themselves. Don’t Stop plays like an album of the vinyl era, at a nice and tidy 45 minutes, with side 1 top-loaded with many of the hit-potential singles and club bangers, while side 2 gets introspective, dubby, and at times, gleefully bonkers. Opener “Hey Annie” bursts out of the gate with a mix of Bow Wow Wow and Kylie Minogue, all tribal drums, laser-guided synths, and stadium cheers, while Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos adds guitar moves to the sassy club-rock tunes “My Love Is Better” and “Loco.” The assured glee in which she tells a lukewarmly talented lover “I Don’t Like Your Band” is pure witty delight. In it, she instructs her indie-rock man to ditch his influences and start listening to Kraftwerk and Moroder, explicitly stating, “It’s not you, it’s your tunes.” She then illustrates precisely what she’s talking about on the album’s next song and arguable high point, “Songs Remind Me of You,” perhaps her biggest pop move so far, and one of her most striking tunes yet, combining pulsating robotics straight out of a Moroder/Italo jam with her sensual laments of an old producer ex whose sound has struck gold.
As I’ve stated earlier, this album is overtly, unashamedly POP. There’s a sheen and polish on everything that may turn some people away, but the tracks are filled with little off-kilter production oddities that may equally turn off the pure pop fans. Annie has always been savvy and intelligent enough to want and be able to balance those two sides of her dichotomy quite effectively. I’ll say this — releasing a record that can appeal to both a seasoned record dork like myself as well as my teenage Gossip Girl-loving sisters is as close to true artistic success as a pop singer can get these days. We’re a long way from that golden age of MTV personality and the “danger” we as youth felt while being wrapped up in its exploits, but this record actually makes me believe that pop’s not quite at the vapid depths that Kanye and Lady Gaga et al. will convince you it has reached. Highest recommendation, seriously. [IQ]
