And our second post goes up around 17 hours after our first one. Back in the saddle, baby…
[Myspace]
[6.60]
Jonathan Bradley: Like Girls Aloud with their appallingly self-conscious manifesto, Annie strokes the egos of some nerds on the Internet by repeating their prejudices, instructing the object of this song that he needs to ditch the guitars and cop some sequencers and Giorgio Moroder sounds, as if a petulant renunciation of the common discourse on authenticity makes for music that is smart or interesting or even enjoyable. If the fella with the boring band follows Annie’s advice, by the sound of this, he’ll end up with a musical backdrop truly worthy of the “tinnitus-inducing” description Ed Okulicz gave to Britney Spears’s “3”, and a melody recycled from “Chewing Gum.” Annie thinks this song is chocolate, but oh no…
[3]
Edward Okulicz: This is deliriously hooky, impishly clever and pretty much fun from start to finish, and perhaps the first time during the ridiculously drawn-out Don’t Stop campaign she’s actually put out something that approximated the sound and quality of an actual hit single.
[8]
John Seroff: Proof that her Chewing Gum doesn’t lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight, “I Don’t Like Your Band” is a pumped-up revisitation of Annie’s 2004 single, boiling over with ideas and thrilling production. The lyrics are acidly clever (I especially love the arch twist on “I Feel Love”); the hyper-processed speak-and-spell vocals fizz and chirp spiritedly; the push-and-pull percussion and backtracked melody struggle violently and inseparably amid constant waves of crystalline riffs and one-off flourishes. It’s smarter and slicker than almost any other pop I’ve heard this year, with an immense heart to boot.
[10]
Alex Ostroff: Remember when Girls Aloud wrote Hoxton Heroes, an (ultimately mediocre) attack on indie that they claimed was so incisive that it was left off Tangled Up for fear of controversy? Watch and learn, girls. This is how you slag off a cute hipster boy: with style, disco strut and bemused pity. Annie wistfully informs her suitor that while he’s cute and has good taste, she can’t stand his band and their bland retrofetishist indie. If you want to be Annie’s lover, you have to get with her friends: Kraftwerk, Bobby O and Moroder. At the tail end of an album campaign made up of Xenomania leftovers and guitars, it’s a joy to find Annie back with a sequencer: Let the games begin!
[8]
Kat Stevens: I can empathise with Annie’s problem here: I’ve have to bite my tongue and offer tactful ‘constructive criticism’ on many an occasion. My solution to this plague of social awkwardness was rather different to Annie’s admirable if brutal honesty – I just stopped attending my mates’ gigs.
[6]
Matt Cibula: It’s disco, it’s loopy pop, it’s new wave, it’s a lot of things, it’s busy, it’s too many things, it’s all lumping together, it’s undifferentiated, it’s empty, it’s nothing at all. That doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you, but isn’t her meaninglessness supposed to be transcendent?
[6]
Keane Tzong: This could be performed as a funeral dirge and still be quite entertaining simply for the lyrics (“somewhere there’s been a failure”) but Annie’s bright, ingenuous-but-really-not vocal delivery and vocal interjections elevate this to something special, something more. Someday, it might do to ask why her true comfort zone seems to be in insulting other people over start-stop electro beats, but right now there’s little reason to object. She’s gifted us with a putdown to rival “Chewing Gum” or “I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me.”
[10]
Ian Mathers: I guess it’s kind of charming that Annie has written the song that the Radio Dept.’s great “I Don’t Need Love, I’ve Got My Band” was the pre-emptive response to, but really, she can and should do better than this, which, aside from mildly amusing meanness, doesn’t have much going for it. “I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me” was similarly petty but had an actual song behind it, you know?
[5]
Pete Baran: When Annie uses her breathy, high pitched, edge of her range voice it usually makes the song shimmer, but she sings most of “I Don’t Like Your Band” in this fashion, diminishing the effect.
[5]
Chuck Eddy: In 1999, when “Greatest Hit” came out, her revival of classic flimsy ’80s Euro-ski-resort disco was a revelation. Half a decade later, on Anniemal, she was crafty enough to pull off a whole album of such stuff, if nothing that touched that initial single. Another half decade on, she’s still tolerable, but her teensy-weensy ozone squeak is starting to grate, and she’s reminding me that Fun Fun had way better melodies.
[6]
Martin Skidmore: I basically like her, but find too many of her tracks forgettable. This is a good idea for a song, and not completely lacking in catchiness, but it’s nowhere near her greatest moments.
[7]
Alex Macpherson: A steel blade silkily presented as a charming trifle. There’s a life lesson in this one, I feel.
[7]
Rodney J. Greene: It’s too platonic. Not only does Annie sound like she could be addressing anybody on Earth, rather than a lover, but she also commits the pitfall of making a pop song, rather than a specific pop song.
[5]
David Moore: I’ve been hanging on to Annie semi-fandom more diligently than I probably should — I dutifully overrated “Anthonio” and everything! But aside from the expected disco bounce, which gets old in about thirty seconds, I’m just not finding anything here — and worse, the “Chewing Gum” referents threaten to jump out and strangle that song, too. Makes me sympathize with this person’s band — “buy a sequencer and then let the games begin”…are we to understand that you’re hoping he sounds more like this? Because if so, uh, damn, I think I’ll take whatever wannabe lad-rock band he’s in to the inevitable sledgehammer Moroder-porn that will result from your advice.
[5]
Michaelangelo Matos: You don’t know how many publicists I want to autoreply to with this song.
[8]