Annie – Don’t Stop (2009) [Smalltown Supersound] // Grade: C+

Sophomore slump? Try total clusterfuck, at least in the making. After several versions of the track listing (the first dating back nearly a year and a half ago), last-minute changes to the release date, a label drama, a collab drama and an impossibly lackluster leak, this official version of Don’t Stop might be the most cautiously anticipated, if not doomed, release of recent memory. And it’s pretty decent: meaning, yes, better than the leak and no, not as disparate as its cobbled together pieces and parts would suggest on paper. In fact, those very pieces have turned Don’t Stop into something of a postmodern beacon; they did, so to speak, show us all how the sausage is made, at the very moment someone was making it. Paging Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard.

But it’s still no Anniemal. Whatever it was that made the debut album so great, that totally undefinable X factor that forced “Chewing Gum” into the hearts and heads of nearly everyone who heard it, is missing here. The songs themselves stand up alright, especially the jangly new-wave “Bad Times” (which feels 100% different on this newly re-sequenced version) and the coercively sweet “Loco”. And new tracks “Hey Annie”, “Don’t Stop” and “I Don’t Like Your Band”, combined with the jettisoning of “I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me”, ultimately give the official release a much-needed shot of personality and pacing. But that Annie-only charm? Her endearing bubblegum swagger?  Gone—and replaced by production so tightly detailed that it often feels more like Gwen Stefani than the Norwegian chanteuse who gave us “Heartbeat”.

Blame it partially on timing. When Anniemal dropped in 2004, it was among the earliest indie-electro albums to emerge from electroclash (um, no pun intended?) with this highly produced, glittery sweet electro-pop. It succeeded where others, like Le Tigre’s This Island, had failed because it owed nothing to anyone; it was just fun. Then came New Young Pony Club. And CSS. And Yelle and Uffie and Ladyhawke and on and on, and Annie—arguably the big sister, if not step-mother, to a fair deal of this stuff—was just another in a laundry list of bubblegum pop singers. But instead of stepping it up on Don’t Stop, she’s simply rehashed what we already know: 80s and 90s dance records are popular now. People will dance to them. Pop songs are great. But they’re certainly not anathema to reinvention; I mean, my god, look at Madonna. Here’s hoping our beloved Annie pushes it forward (just a little more, please) next time around.