Anna Of The North – Girl In A Bottle (PIAS) (13th Floor Album Review)
Anna Of The North is back with her third LP Girl In A Bottle, an upbeat indie-pop outing. Catching us a hook from the get go, the (half?) of an album is a twenty-minute (twenty-two, perhaps) break of familiarity.
Norwegian based singer-songwriter Anna Lotterud has been doing this since 2014. The debut album Lovers achieved a relatively fairy-tale success (the title track currently sits on 24 million views on Youtube!), and a plethora of collaborations followed. After two releases that didn’t quite make the same impact and a well-deserved break to focus on herself, she’s back with a new album. And this is only Part 1. Part 2 will turn up next year at some point, cleverly titled Girl In A Bottle – Please Recycle.
Girl In A Bottle takes it’s kick off with Since You, a tune that gave the overture of my expectations on this release. There are the highly compressed electric drums, the warm bass and the palm muted pop guitar that goes back and forth over the same four to five notes. Enter the light synths and the listenable-yet-not-slap-in-the-face-catchy vocal melody. Oh, and she mentions New York. Have we heard this all before? Am I the only one who feels the strong sense of déjà vu to the release of every female indie-pop diva at the moment?
Putting my comments of originality aside, Call Me is a catchy little number (despite some relatively threadbare lyrics and an unnecessary spelling lesson). There’s a nice layer of percussion in the production across this song (and the whole album) which gives it another nice layer. Waiting for Love fits into the same category, with some nice harmonies layered over a snappy vocal line. It’s even complete with a Daft Punk-esque vocoder
Linked between several tunes are two snippets of songs. Perhaps these are indications of what is to come in the second side of this LP. Perhaps these are scraps of songs that weren’t up to code. I don’t know. I will say that these seem to be where Anna Of The North displays her vocal abilities. friday and saturday i don’t hear a word sounds like a vulnerable demo which really gives us a taste of this artist without the production (and some Norwegian muttering at the end? Another way to distinguish her from a typical American pop singer).
I will put all cards on the table and admit that this is not my usual go-to genre. During these (few) times in my (short) reviewing career, I usually try to analyse the purpose of the music. So, here goes;
Is it upbeat? Yeah, I think an awkward white guy (like me) could dance along to it.
Does it have creative instrumentation? Not creative as such, but a broad range. And, all played well!
Is it catchy? Yes, I think so.
Is it groundbreaking? No. I don’t feel that Anna Of The North varies from a formula that I feel is ever-present in indie-pop releases.
Girl In A Bottle is a nice jaunt. She’s good at what she does. Yet I felt there was not enough original substance to push it apart from the droves of indie-pop artists on display at the moment.
Daniel Edmonds
Girl In A Bottle is out now via PIAS
