CD Project Thing #7 - Andrew W.K., Angelfish, Annie

Andrew W.K. - "I Get Wet"

There could probably be an arguement made for filing this under "W" (and feel free to make it), but I've always felt it belonged under "A". Anyway, this is probably the heaviest sounding album I own. The thing is, it's also amazingly poppy and fun. I'm not sure I ever realized this before today, but parts of it sound quite a bit like a harder-rocking version of The Rentals, and if you know how I feel about The Rentals (hint: I love The Rentals), you know that's a good thing. It's honestly got me thinking of looking into his second album, because I can't imagine that it wouldn't be available really cheap.

Angelfish - "Angelfish"

From the "before they were stars" file, this was Shirley Manson's band before she joined Garbage. You can probably imagine exactly how it sounds - just think of any mediocre mid-90s guitar band with Shirley Manson's vocals. It's pretty decent, actually, but I'm saying that as a person who's a pretty big Garbage fan. I really don't know if it got any notice at all in 1994 (I suspect not), because every band sounded like this in 1994. I think the big winners in all of this were Radioactive Records, who (because of this album) got a credit on (and some money from, I'd presume) every Garbage album.

Annie - "Anniemal"

I never knew much about Annie (still don't, really) except that she's Norwegian and that Pitchfork really liked her singles, putting a few of them in top positions in their "singles of the year" chart. Now, normally Pitchfork liking something doesn't matter to me at all, but they also described her as really poppy, and we all know what a sucker I am for the pop. So when this album hit BMG, I had to get it, and I'm glad I did, since "Chewing Gum" might be the very best song ever. If I had to describe the album as anything I'd say it's sort of like early Madonna, except not really. You've just got to listen to it, I think.

Wikipedia fact of the day: Annie recorded a version of "Chewing Gum" in Simish for the Scandanivan version of "The Sims 2: Nightlife". I'm so jealous.