Pitchfork Still Loves Annie!
Posted November 18th 2009 
by Kirkland 
Comments (2)
Filed Under 
Don't Stop, Reviews
Pitchfork Media has just reviewed Don’t Stop and it’s a good review. Phew. The famous music site is almost impossible to please but they adored Annie’s amazing debut (didn’t we all?) which means I adore them. Not only do they review the album but they’ve tackled the All Night EP too. Hurrah!
Don’t Stop Reviewed On Pitchfork!
KEEP ANNIE INDIE!
Don’t Stop Reviews!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted November 12th 2009 by Kirkland Comments (2)
Filed Under Don't Stop, Reviews
We know that Don’t Stop is the best album of the year. Obviously! But what do all the magazines and websites think?
So far the reviews have been glowingly positive which is the only reason I’m putting this up. While Annie’s ‘rivals’ make music that sounds like their synths are being played with the lid down, Annie only makes genius pop. So let’s proceed to Metacritic which takes all the scores from the relevant sites and combines them.
So far the score is at 81 which is filed under Universal Acclaim. This could change but it probably won’t. Or, to put things in perspective; Annie’s genius debut Anniemal scored 81 when all the reviews had been compiled.
What The Critics Said About Don’t Stop
MusicOMH.com – Don’t Stop is one of the best pop albums of 2009.
The Guardian – It’s a delightful confection, filled with attention to detail and perfectly turned.
Slant Magazine – Annie deserves credit for attempting to stretch, both vocally and lyrically.
NME – A heart of glass is smashed. Or not. With a record this good, how could a boy bring her down?
Kirkland Ciccone – the best album in the history of pop music. Annie is better than Beethoven and Bowie and Lennon and McCartney combined!
My favourite review of the lot is from Drowned In Sound. It just sums up everything that’s relevant about the brilliance of Annie and this album. And perhaps the problems surrounding her criminal lack of recognition.
Click HERE to read it.
Anniemal #167 On Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of The 2000s
Posted September 28th 2009 by Aaron Comments (0)
Filed Under Anniemal, Reviews
Few genres got a bigger boost from file-sharing in the early years of this decade than danceable European pop music. The spread of mp3s around the world allowed for the creation of a thriving global pop underground teeming with shoulda-been hits by coulda-been stars who previously had few options to find an audience outside of the tight playlists of corporate radio. Annie, an enigmatic Norwegian bombshell with a sweet wispy voice and a taste for slick neo-80s production, was the first of these acts to make it big on the same terms as countless indie bands– well outside the bounds of the mainstream, but beloved by a significant number of fans hungry for the sort of dazzling, witty, and unabashedly hooky pop music that had nearly vanished from American radio. Unsurprisingly, most of the attention on Annie’s debut record, Anniemal, was placed on the singles– the melancholy hyperballad “Heartbeat” and the delightfully coy “Chewing Gum” stand as two of the great almost-hits of the decade– but the entire album is stacked with gems, from Richard X’s effervescent “Me Plus One” to the psychedelic disco meltdown of “Come Together”. –Matthew Perpetua
Popjustice On…The Paul Epworth Tracks
Posted September 04th 2009 by Aaron Comments (1)
Filed Under Don't Stop, Reviews
For the final proper actual no-messing-around-now definitive release of Annie’s ‘Don’t Stop’ three new songs, produced by Paul Epworth, have appeared on the tracklisting.
They are called ‘Hey Annie’, ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘I Don’t Like Your Band’.
Here are reviews of the above-mentioned songs.
‘Hey Annie’
Amazing.‘Don’t Stop’
Amazing.‘I Don’t Like Your Band’
Amazing.It strikes us as odd sometimes when people talk about websites contributing to some sort of ‘decline in music journalism’.
Nothing there that we couldn’t have guessed ourselves but at least the new tracks have the approval of Popjustice.
Heartbeat On Pitchfork’s Top 500 Tracks of The 2000’s
Posted August 21st 2009 by Aaron Comments (1)
Filed Under Heartbeat, Reviews
Annie’s 2004 hit Heartbeat has made it onto Pitchfork’s Top 500 Tracks of The 2000’s coming in at #17. Pitchfork explained:
A few great records were made this decade about the memory of dancing: In this one the dance is a stand-in for everything joyful and special about a lost moment. With its urgent builds, “Heartbeat” wills that dance to start again; with her serene delivery, Annie knows that it can’t really. An Internet sensation before that meant much actual success, for most of the 00s Annie made ginger attempts to step from being “our” pop star to being everyone’s. The subsequent success of Robyn and M.I.A. suggests this was no pipe-dream, but since most of Annie’s best songs from “Chewing Gum” to “Anthonio” are exercises in beguiling diffidence it’s not wholly surprising she never managed it.
And it hardly matters: hit-laden or not, very few catalogues contain anything as bewitching as “Heartbeat”, a piece of disco handicraft as intimate as it is giddy. Annie’s final verse, taken quiet and half-spoken as the song peaks, is like eavesdropping on a secret wish. As soon as she finishes it the song blows out like a birthday candle. “I won’t forget.” Stardom be damned, neither will we. –Tom Ewing
