Annie made a big impression on the alternative dance-pop music scene of the mid-2000's. Her singles and albums (2005's Anniemal and 2009's Don't Stop) were fresh and bubbly, combining synth pop, '80s radio sounds, and pulsing techno into snappy and fun songs sung in sweet and disarming fashion. She made a couple of great singles in the 2010s that showed that, despite fading from view a bit, her pop sensibility was as strong as ever. Her third album, 2020's Dark Hearts, is a totally different ball of wax. Inspired by her move home to Norway from Germany, in part to take care of her sick mother, the album is tangled up in memories and finished with a thick coating of melancholy. She and producer Stefan Storm of the Sound of Arrows forgo the bubbly electronic feel of her earlier work in favor of a muted, nocturnal approach built around washes of synths and slow tempos. Occasional guitars creep into the arrangements to jangle sadly, keyboards on loan from the Twin Peaks soundtrack loom in the background, and Annie sings the obviously heartfelt lyrics about the heartbreak of the past, the slow dissipation of dreams, and the end of the world with quiet, introspective passion. The record sounds nothing like the shiny pop she used to make and more like a gloomier version of Saint Etienne spiked with a little bit of the cinematic gleam of Chromatics. The songs that have the lightest approach work the best; the outer space doo wop of "Corridors of Time" and sweetly swaying "Stay Tomorrow" have relatively buoyant melodies, and Annie sings them with just the right amount of distance. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi

1		In Heaven
2		The Streets Where I Belong
3		Dark Hearts
4		Miracle Mile
5		Corridors of Time
6		Forever '92
7		American Cars
8		Mermaid Dreams
9		Stay Tomorrow
10		The Countdown to the End of the World
11		The Bomb
12		The Untold Story
13		It's Finally Over