STUCK RECORDS

Annie – ‘Don’t Stop’
UK Release 19/10/09 (Totally)

The wait is over and it was so worth it. Annie finally follows up her debut album ‘Anniemal’ after five years in the pop wilderness, and manages to simultaneously pick up where she left off and overshadow her last album completely. Don’t Stop is the work of some very talented songwriters and producers (among them pop heroes Xenomania and Richard X, the latter of which produced one of the finest singles of the last ten years, Annie’s own ‘Chewing Gum’).

Xenomania have their stamp all over Don’t Stop, especially on ‘My Love Is Better’, which could easily be a Girls Aloud track from around 2005 – they were originally on backing vocals and I can easily hear them singing this. A great thing about this album is that Annie makes sonic references back to the eighties but also the sound of earlier this decade, all the while staying contemporary and radio-friendly. This is nowhere near dated but refreshingly nostalgic, a pure pop album without gimmicks or publicity stunts to shadow the music. And it sounds like she loves what she does. Like Lady Gaga with added pants, she’s a pop fan making pop records with no shame. Other highlights include the catchy, radio-friendly title track, which is probably the strongest melody on the record. ‘I Don’t Like Your Band’ is a stuttering, cheeky throw-back to ‘Chewing Gum’ that again sounds a bit like Girls Aloud even though it isn’t a Xenomania production. These comparisons are meant to be complimentary – Girls Aloud are on the forefront of pop and as we see here, when given a chance, Annie releases music that can compete with their best singles. ‘Songs Remind Me Of You’, the first proper single, is a space-age odyssey that sounds like Kylie stuck between the extremes of Impossible Princess and Light Years.

The fuckery around this album would make a great tell-all book and really opens your eyes to what goes on in record companies, but when Don’t Stop is playing you immediately forget that we’ve been waiting half a decade and just lose yourself in the breathy, glorious vocals and endless synths, always somewhere between dreamy and relentless. Just when it looked as if Annie would be a relic of this decade, just a few months before it ends she’s released proof that she isn’t going anywhere.

****½
Richard Croft