Annie: "I Don't Like Your Band"

With its endlessly delayed release dates and innumerable faux leaks, Annie’s sophomore record Don’t Stop is one ill-advised dreadlock and a Best Buy endorsement deal shy of becoming the Chinese Democracy (2008) of Scandanavian electropop. And as Buckethead could tell you, were he blessed with a mouth made of something other than an off-brand children’s Halloween mask, disappointment is all but inevitable when your record release has been postponed to the point of infamy.

“I Don’t Like Your Band,” one of the new additions to the ever-changing track list, is a good song, but, like most good songs, it’s not strong enough to support nearly three years of mounting anticipation. Following “Chewing Gum” and the other highlights from 2004’s Anniemal, the track’s got playful sass to boot: “I like you / But I don’t like your band” goes the chorus’s hipster-bashing diss, and the rest of the lyrics are somewhat entertaining or refreshingly mischievous variations on this theme. (One can really appreciate the understated entendre of a line like “Your little 7-inch sounds so obscene unless you spin it at 45” when its top 40 equivalent is “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”) But as a promising opening gives way to an anticlimactic chorus, the track’s electro-sheen begins to wear thin. Annie’s scenester-baiting quips—lackluster compared to the kind that, with a minimal beat and a deadpan vocal, James Murphy could keep afloat for eight minutes on “Losing My Edge”—aren’t sharp enough to sustain the song even to the three-minute mark. By the time the half-hearted semblance of a bridge (“I feel bad, I feel bad”) comes in, the track fizzles out into flat repetition.

Even given the perils of impossible expectations, though, I have faith that Don’t Stop as a whole has the potential to live up to the hype. Anniemal, after all, is more than just a showcase for a couple of great singles, it’s that increasingly rare pop record, especially looking back, consistently fresh from start to finish. So even if “I Don’t Like Your Band” doesn’t quite rise to the challenge, one can reasonably hope that Annie’s got more up her magnificently poofy sleeves.