A cursory listen to Norwegian techno-pop cutie Annie and Berlin-based, cerebro-dance entrepreneur Ellen Allien not only provides a spectrum of the different grooves one can shake to, it also offers the entirely wrong idea about these two electronic music starlets.
Annie
Telling lyric: "Hey Annie, well look at you/Is that a new boy stuck on your shoe?/C'mon Annie, how is it so?/You've always got a new bubble to blow."
Vibe: In the song "Chewing Gum," a buoyant twinkle of melody takes hold before thumping bass comes in and anchors the track to a dance floor near you. The ebullient Annie then uh-uhs her way through the intro and into the lyric above. Throughout her debut LP Anniemal, the vibe is light, airy and disco-driven pop. And just when you think it's all fun, she smokes a ballad like "Heartbeat" through your ears with its touching words documenting an ephemeral scene, its Motor City mood and its live-instrument production courtesy of the ambient-electro duo Royksopp.
Influences Worn on Sleeve: Annie seems to dance and delight under the disco-ball hung by fellow Scandinavians ABBA and, her sensual rhythms and pixie-ish voice cribbed from Kylie Minogue, you just can't get out of your head.
'80s Dance Movie Touchstone:
Footloose. What would it be like to live in a world where you couldn't dance? Baby, please, I'd never want to know.
What You Didn't Know After One Spin: While she's a more acceptable hollaback girl than Gwen Stefani for the hipster/underground set, Annie's album didn't exactly come naturally to her. Some of her early work, including the claptastic freak fantasy "The Greatest Hit," was the fruit of a collaboration with her late boyfriend Tore E. Kroknes (aka DJ Erot), who passed away in 2001. She says it would have been much easier for her to put out a sad, mournful album, so she bucked the trend.
March 20. With Talk Demonic, Shy Child, Paolo Nutini. Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700; 7, $10. Ell------ en Allien
Ellen Allien
Telling lyric: "Brain is lost/The world is mine/Future is dust/Flesh makes me blind."
Vibe: Guttural, driving, hypnotic, Allien's music seems made to live in a pitch black basement under a suspension bridge. Her last two albums, Berlinette and Thrills, evoke post-industrial blight, but with a resolute eye toward rebuilding. No matter how much low-end she lets weigh a song down, how much she decides to twitch and glitch a phrasing or how she wishes to shroud a vocal intonation, she never neglects the overall composition of her songs and she never loses sight of the pulsing rhythms. Despite emanating from a heart of darkness, it still has an undeniable beat.
Influences Worn on Sleeve: No shocker here considering her German heritage, but the robotic space jams of Kraftwerk are the sonic Cliff's Notes to Allien's creepy ruminations. She also name-checks David Bowie for his "shape-shifting" abilities, but it's his macabre glam that Allien really seems to take to her heart.
'80s Dance Movie Touchstone:
It's danceable, but it's also straight out of a steel mill, so it can be nothing else but Flashdance.
What You Didn't Know After One Spin: Despite the chills and bleak visuals of her records, Allien grew up in the sunnier side of the Wall in West Berlin. The cheerless gloom on her records isn't the product of constant emotional distress, she says. Rather, it's a manifestation of her distress with the larger state of the world, from war to everyone's favorite cause for creative output, George W. Bush. Also, she just prefers her electro to be a little dour and forlorn.
March 18. Avalon, 662 6th Ave. (betw. 20th &
21st Sts. ), 212-807-7780; 10, $15.