Pop Music Review Thread!

[EricMontreal22]

*edit* Grr, could somebody add a W to the title to make this readd "review"? sigh*

I had no idea where to put this, and didn't feel it waranted a specific thread, but my fave current pop music critic (yes, that's his title) is Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker of all places. Not just cuz he digs a lot of the music I like, that's underappreciated in the US (he's written articles about why The Pet Shop Boys still make great records, what the US is missing out on with Kylie, how genius Xenomania and Girls Aloud are in their way as well as writing about hip hop and more "arty" US indie pop), but I like how he takes records that the average New Yorker reader would either never have any knowledge of, or consider themselves above, and in a typically New Yorker pretentious fashion (don't get me wrong, I subscribe and love the mag) explains what's good about them. I just love his style (he did a great piece early last year about Lady Gaga and got her pros and cons dead on I thought).

Anyway, this week he did a review of one o fmy fave releases of last year, now out in the US, Annie - Don't Stop

Her songs bounce and skate—they’re danceable, but lighter than straight house.

Pop Music

What Do You Want?

Annie’s underground mainstream.

by Sasha Frere-Jones

January 11, 2010

There is a recurring aversion on the part of American labels to foreign singers, and it sometimes amounts to a mutual distrust. Kylie Minogue, the tiny Australian who has annexed most of Europe, has had only three hits here. Girls Aloud, the devilishly clever flagship act of the producer Brian Higgins and his Xenomania production team, generally doesn’t release records outside Britain. For many such acts, the American mountain can sometimes appear like too much bother, since even superstars can’t gain purchase. But given the retro-eighties feel and Euro-friendly nature of the year’s biggest female star, Lady Gaga, why not admit an actual European, who is even more fond of the eighties, into the game?

Anne Lilia Berge Strand, a Berlin-based Norwegian singer-songwriter known as Annie, has no American label behind her. Her second album, “Don’t Stop,” a brash, bright, and easily absorbed pop effort, was completed in 2008 but is only now being released, jointly, by Annie’s Totally Records and an independent label in Norway called Smalltown Supersound. (After working on an earlier version, Annie was dropped by Island in Europe.)

Is there something inherently Norwegian about Annie that might scare off Americans? She sings in English, and her accent, audible when speaking, is almost imperceptible when she sings, and her high, aspirate voice avoids the rafters and stays in a conversational range and timbre. (This might be a strike against her, considering the taste Americans have developed for glass-shatterers, thanks in part to “American Idol.”)

As a performer, Annie shouldn’t be a hard sell. A small, sharp, and evenly proportioned blonde, she photographs well and throws herself confidently into all kinds of dancing and role-playing. With Annie, there is no particularly complicated relationship to pop—she makes records and videos as if she organically, naturally loved the form. She is not a refugee from the world of theatre, and she has no unpublished string quartet about wombats up her sleeve. In fact, Annie’s first release—ten years old now—was “The Greatest Hit,” a new song sung over a big sample of Madonna’s “Everybody” (which was her first single, released in 1982). Not exactly fighting the system. Annie’s initial bit of brilliance was the 2003 single “Chewing Gum,” produced by Richard X, who was one of the few bedroom-studio types to cross over from the British mashup scene of the early aughts into actual producing.

Richard X’s first productions reconfigured hits from the eighties, like Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?,” but he and Annie started from scratch on “Chewing Gum,” and came up with a song that easily could have fallen off the back of a 1981 Tom Tom Club album. The sounds, as with most Annie songs, are all brief, discrete flashes and blips, danceable but lighter in bearing than straight house. The songs do not generally thump—they bounce and skate. As is customary with Annie lyrics, the singer is in control—she’s dissing disposable, dumb boys who think they are chocolate but are only chewing gum. The more sentimental and straightforward “My Heartbeat,” a small blast of sincerity with the drive of a rock band playing disco, was named the best song of 2004 by Pitchfork.

With the spread of talent shows and of YouTube clips of those competitions, odds have changed slightly for Europeans. Leona Lewis, the winner of the third season of “The X-Factor,” in 2006, had 2008’s biggest-selling single, the purple ballad “Bleeding Love.” And, on the main stage, Susan Boyle, currently at 1.8 million units sold, set a record for best first-week sales ever for a female singer.

As an artist who owns her own masters, Annie may be in a position to actually earn something back, especially in the digital realm, where the costs of physical production and distribution are sometimes zero. And though radio moves more slowly than ever to adopt new sounds, television and films are moving faster. One or two licenses to television advertisements could put Annie in the black for the year. (An infinitely more idiosyncratic act from Britain, the brilliant and slightly cracked Micachu and the Shapes, has already landed in a Crayola commercial, a type of deal that will net almost any band more than it will ever see from a year of album royalties.)

Generally popular on blogs, Annie now has a wide-net kind of album that can bring her into as many homes as the viral network allows. Several record executives have told me that NPR has become the prime tool for selling albums outside the teen-pop continuum; “Don’t Stop,” equally a contemporary dance album and a throwback for parents who are stuck on their Yaz records, would fit right in.

Annie’s commitment to brightness is total. “Don’t Stop” rides for eight bumptious numbers without trouble, until her cheeriness lands her in the wrong television advertisement. “The Breakfast Song” is a stomper, like aluminum and plastic thwacked together, and the core of the song is a single, possibly unnecessary question: “What do you want, what do you want for breakfast?” Turned into a chant, a potentially cute idea devolves into a harangue. If she takes away all the spritz, Annie gets lost. “When the Night” is the kind of neon-lit dime-store ballad that a-ha or Paul Young could have handled in the eighties, but Annie can’t find her way in the melancholy. (Put her back onto the dance floor and she’ll fold in the heartbreak between all the strobes.)

Annie worked with Higgins on “Don’t Stop,” as well as with Richard X and Paul Epworth, but she is a one-woman show if she needs to be. Many of the hundreds of songs that were written for “Don’t Stop” were drafted at home on Annie’s laptop. She also uses a Tenori-on, a delightful electronic instrument that combines a small synthesizer with a sequencer that renders visually, like a Lite-Brite set come to life. (The British singer Little Boots makes use of one in her live shows, and it often upstages her band.) Though there is nothing inherently political about Annie’s music or her story—as has been true, sadly, for thousands of acts through the years—she can be seen as part of a subtle trend that women and machines are creating together. One of “Don’t Stop” ’s tracks, “I Don’t Like Your Band,” confronts a problem familiar to anyone who dates musicians: “It’s not you, it’s your tunes—I don’t like your band.” There’s nothing a mere haircut will do for this guy, and she drops the auxiliary message in the middle of the song: “Buy yourself a sequencer and let the games begin!” Those on the side of the machines are more mobile and not as easily tied to a sound, or to as gendered a sound, as a live band.

As telling as Annie’s endorsement of sequencers is her take on radio, in “Songs Remind Me of You,” another collaboration with Richard X, which gives a huge nod to Giorgio Moroder’s work on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” This one does thump, though the mood is slightly lost and the words work around a regret. As the song unfolds and the girl sings about a boy from the past, the chorus sounds oddly like a taunt, although the implication is that the boy whose promises “vanished” is actually quite successful: “How does it feel to hear your songs on the radio? And does it hurt to hear those songs on the radio?” The singer loves these songs, apparently—“Music so good, music so clear”—and her delight reinforces the tinge of empathy in the chorus. The singer seems to feel that getting your songs on the radio might not be worth what it costs the songwriter. ♦

[Sylph]

I remember I criticised him here, didn't I? It was an article on Timbaland, I believe.

What I mind with many of these critics is that the critique is about everything else except music! Usually it is a verbose philosophical musing on the state of the industry, singer's look, scandals surrounding him or her... Tonnes of other, irrelevant stuff and very little about the production, the instruments, the vocal arrangements. It's just mentioned in passing: "lush Hollywood strings" (they are always lush and always Hollywood), "uninspired vocals", "thumping bass beat" (it's always thumping) and so on... One could compile a dictionary of clichés.

[EricMontreal22]

See I get that, but I don't think it applies to Sasha. It's true he always goes on at length about the background of the performer--but this isn't a music mag (and his reviews are far better than, say, Rolling Stones) and most New Yorker readers need the context and background or they'll skip the article. I think he describes the appeal of the *music* a lot actually, and spot on--though, again I agree that most magazine music critics, simply don't. BUT, you're right this review works more, and best, as an introduction to, in this case, Annie then an actual review.

[Sylph]

Not a review, but I wasn't sure whether to post this as a separate thread!

[EricMontreal22]

I'm so looking forward to this! Yes, they can be pretentious but at their best, Goldfrap is awesome. It's funny, I've seen Goldfrapp live twice, and never even thought one way or the other about Alison's sexuality...

Of course Moroder references are de rigeur nowadays with any synth based act, but the fact that elsewhere she has said both lead single Rocket, and Head First are big Moroder hommages has me excited (Head First is based on the brooding synths of Moroder's Cat People soundtrack, and the title track done with Bowie)

*I wish a mod could fix the title of this thread to read "review" not "revie" so I wouldn't be embarassed whenever I saw it *

[Sylph]

So, you really love synths? Or just Moroder's synths? That's weird! Or maybe not!

I'm sure that if you'd say your favourite instrument is the cor anglais or the viola, you'd be considered a pompous bore.

So perhaps synths are the only alternative.

[EricMontreal22]

It is weird. I wonder if it's some sort of backlash to my childhood--I started violin at a young age (it was the Suzuki method--learning primarily by ear so I started when I was 3) and till I was 12 or so, most of what I listened to (by choice and also because of my teachers) was classical music. So then when I got into pop music I sorta embraced what many would call the least "authentic"--synth based dance music, etc. But no, a lot of synth stuff does bug or bore me--but I think Moroder was (at his best) groundbreaking--I do love what he did with it (and he often did incorporate full orchestras too at least in his disco period--in the 80s that was less popular). Also, I do prefer fully orchestrated movie soundtracks--from Hermman to Hisaishi for the most part, yet I think Moroder's synth scores (as well as a handful of others by Tangerine Dream, etc) are masterful. The problem is, what started off as groundbreaking (his Oscar winning, spooky score for Midnight Express, or the perfect American Gigolo and Cat People scores, Tangerine Dream's Risky Business score, etc) by the mid 80s suddenly someone realized you could make a synth score for a film FAR cheaper than an orchestral one and every cheapo movie had a cheapo synth score--so that the very sound of them basically screamed bad movie--it became saturated. Still I think the best ones stand out.

(And no, my fave instrument is the viol da gamba...)

(I swear I'm kidding Though as a kid I was obsessed with harpsichords--I always thought I'd be rich, by the age I am now--HA--and have my own. I still am a sucker for that sound.)

[Sylph]

Gabriella Cilmi worked with Xenomania:

[EricMontreal22]

She did but I find her subpar--it was Xenomania trying to do Duffy/Whinehouse and not their true stuff (plus her live vocals suck). Fun first single though. (Sorry, are you a fan? or why did you just bring her up? *confused* )

[Sylph]

'Cause she advertises this second album as dance/disco.

[Bright Eyes]

I've just listened to a few songs from Goldfrapp, but they seem a little too slow and ethereal to me. I'm much more a fun of the upbeat stylings of La Roux. Maybe I should check out this Annie person?

As the main article mentioned though, it is a crime Kylie hasn't been more accepted in North America. And Girls Aloud are always sure to get me in a good mood. Love them. "Call the Shots" is one of my favourites.

[Chris B]

The best part of Girls Aloud is Nadine. From the accent to the voice to that fierce and aloof swagger she has. Just love her in their live performances. So over the top almost like a drag queen. Or Dorian Lord.

[EricMontreal22]

And she was dating Jesse Metcalf LOL. I love all the Girls though... Even the poor Ginger one.

Amello do check out Annie--also if you haven't, check out Little Boots which got compared a lot to LaRoux but I prefer (she is a bit more polished though--laroux has a better rough energy)

[Sylph]

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks for that, Biolay is my fave male French pop star actually... (which means he's still far lower ranked by me than my beloved Mylene Farmer )

Great article though--I actually didn't know too much about him. Biolay's stuff for singer Keren Ann, is really really good too.