Little popster Annie so cool
CLUB LIFE
Asign of maturity is, I believe, the realization that you shouldn’t have to lie to yourself about your relationship with pop.
At a certain point, censoring your musical diet to fit a vain personal standard of “ cool” or to maintain a public veneer of hipness grows tiresome. The pointlessness of tying yourself in knots over the fact that you kinda dig that new Gwen Stefani tune becomes clear. Life is finite; why deny yourself an extra avenue of happiness on the long trek to the grave?
Annie Lilia Berge Strand has no such qualms. Although the impossibly cute Norwegian singer typically known just as Annie came up through the ranks of Bergen’s thriving local indie-rock scene ( which has also hatched Sondre Lerche and Kings of Convenience), she has always reserved a place in her heart for an early teenhood spent bopping around her bedroom to Madonna and New Kids on the Block, refusing to buy into the elitist notion that “ fun” equals a creative dead end.
That conviction and the smart pairing of breezy girly- pop tropes with au courant indie and electro overtones carried her wonderful singles “ Heartbeat” and “ Chewing Gum” well beyond the European pop charts last year to an unlikely cult of North American hipsters.
Annie catalyzed a sort of mass confession from the cool kids — including the reigning online guardians of taste at Pitchfork Media, who picked “ Heartbeat” as the top single of 2004 — that they are not, in fact, above the plebes in their capacity to fall for a simple, direct melody and a killer chorus. To many newly opened eyes, Annie has redeemed pop.
“ Some people would say that. I don’t know if everybody would,” says Annie, 25, from her flat in Bergen. “ I’ve always been really inspired by pop, but also by all kinds of music. I think people should just relax. It’s just music. Good music is good music.”
Annie’s debut, Anniemal — recently released on these shores by Vice Records, home to the Streets, the Stills and Toronto’s Death From Above 1979 — is full of good music.
It’s bubblegum, yes, and redolent of prime pop queenery past from the likes of Madonna, Dee- Lite, Kylie Minogue and even Britney Spears. But the arrangements turn the genre just slightly on its head by setting the indelible tunes against a backdrop drawn from the contemporary indie and electronic undergrounds. Quite legitimately, since her friends and current tourmates in cosmic electro-pop outfit Royksopp are among those who lent a hand with production.
Far from a well- connected newbie, though, Annie started honing her sound in 1999, when she contributed vocals to a track cooked up by her thenboyfriend, Tore Kroknes, using a sample from Madonna’s “ Everyday.”
That tune, “ The Greatest Hit,” ( revived for Anniemal) “ came out on this really nice label and sort of became an underground hit or whatever you’d call it and people wanted more. I think we made 500 copies and it sold out in a two days or something.” A “ really, really bad record deal” with Loaded ensued, and before the pair could navigate its way out of industry hell and record an album, Kroknes died at 22 of a rare heart disease.
It took Annie a good 18 months to recover from the shock and forge ahead with her music, and there remains a palpable, bittersweet undercurrent to a lot of the outwardly chipper ditties on Anniemal.
Annie herself is still puzzled that anyone outside Norway is intrigued by what she’s doing, and the sometime DJ speaks with obvious excitement of K7’ s recent request that she mix the next installment in the label’s excellent DJ Kicks series.
“ It’s definitely been strange,” she says. “ For me, especially, it was very strange to see that I got so much reaction outside of Europe because, to me, it always sounded very sort of European. I was very surprised to see it got interest in Australia and Japan, and definitely the U. S. was a very big surprise for me. I’m now working much more outside Europe than I am in Europe. I’m very interested to see where it goes.” Just the facts Who: Annie, opening for Royksopp Where: The Opera House, 735 Queen E. When: Tuesday @ 9:30 p.m. Tickets: $18.50 @ Rotate This, Soundscapes and Ticketmaster