Number 5 of 2004 — Annie: Anniemal

When I was first formulating my top 10 albums of 2004, this one was nowhere near it. But over the subsequent months, I came to realise that there’s much more going on here than first appears. Pitchfork recently remarked that live, Annie is adrift when it comes to who she is expected to be: pop princess, indie-friendly songwriter, or dancefloor filler. All these personas are on this album.

You see, Annie writes pop songs. Not pop songs like Kylie. But real pop songs with tunes, lyrics (and vocals) that are staggeringly uplifting in a helium kind of way. We’re talking several miles high. But there’s also a downside. Some songs have a depressing edge to them. This obtuse and unexpected balance is what makes this album so brilliant. It’s not a pop album however. There aren’t twelve hit singles here. Anniemal is not the album I thought it would be. It’s much much more. And it’s a strange, um, animal.

Let’s start with the first five tracks. There’s the quirky half-spoken animal oriented Intro, Chewing Gum, her debut UK single, which convinces the listener that Annie is a dumb pop puppet although it’s probably the wittiest track of the last couple of decades. All Too Late shows she isn’t dumb: “I don’t wanna wanna / be no primadonna / tired standing waiting feeling like you never wanna”. It’s a dark string laden affair with scary synth drops, tribal drums, random musical add-ins and subtle hidden snare rolls. Me Plus One is the perfect example of what Annie is about. Every single vocal placement is perfect – from the delivery of the lyrics to the “ooh, wooh-ooh”’s, the “baa-baa-baa”’s (and there’s plenty of these all over the album), and the phat squelchy bass line. My Heartbeat is all happy, but feels strangely sad to me.

Now, first time around this was where it lost me. Nothing following comes close to these first tracks, or so I thought. You need to go back and forwards. Listen to the album again. For example, compare and contrast the outer spaceyness of Me Plus One with the am-I-happy-or-not feel of the later Happy without You “The day I left you / must be the greatest in my life”. Then you realise that there are emotions at work here. The songs work together as an album. Helpless Fool for Love scales the highs and lows of fooling (falling) in love, both musically and lyrically. The chorus is incredible.

No Easy Love is a chunky funky dancefloor number, “Please just stay around / you are my beat, my sound / my light, my destiny”, and Greatest Hit takes wholesale rips from Madonna’s Everybody and turns it into a dancefloor lovesong, “We dance and groove in the disco lights / I want you alone with me tonight / Can I hold you, make you feel all right? / Really want to stay here all the night.”

My change of mind became most apparent on Come Together. A track that starts all quiet, mellow, reflective. “When you’re feeling sad and blue / you should know that you are / the sun and the moon to me” Then after a minute or so veers off into Disco and runs around like a dog with several tails for the next six minutes. The album finishes with My Best Friend, Annie’s homage to her partner who produced her early work, including Greatest Hit, but died in 2001 from a congential heart defect, aged 23.

But, if you don’t believe me that this album is great, Pitchfork loves it, so I’m surely not wrong.