ANNIE AND THE VICE RECORDS LADIES ///
INTERVIEW NICOLAS FOX RICCIARDI ///
TRIBECA GRAND HOTEL, NEW YORK ///
PHOTOGRAPHY BRENDAN DUGAN ///


Say Royksopp of their native Norway: "One of the advantages of coming from a little shit-kicking place in northern Norway is most people wouldn't know what to expect. We are not bound to shifting trends, so we can mess around and do what we want to. We don't believe there is anything called Norwegian credibility."

"I am going to agree with them," says Annie, a fellow Norwegian and frequent collaborator. "So many people are gonna ask why there are so many people coming from Norway. It's a lot of people doing music and being very creative. It can be very boring there," she admits, "and it rains a lot, so you kind of sit in your home and do your music."

Rain and boredom apparently breed wonderful, tongue-in-cheek pop music, judging by Annie's debut album, Anniemal. In addition to two Royksopp-produced dance tracks-including the European hit "Heartbeat"-the album features "Chewing Gum," the sassiest adolescent club song ever written and produced by a 20-something British DJ (Richard X) and sung by a twenty-something Norwegian DJ. "I didn't want to make a club album," Annie says. "But of course it's important to me, since I'm a DJ."

Her American audience came as a surprise to Annie: "For a long time I thought people [in the States] were just listening to hip-hop and rock and nothing else. I was really surprised that the U.S. liked it. I thought it was a little too European." With the Stateside release of Annie's album this summer, expectations mounted for Norway to rescue Scandinavian pop music from its mid-'90s tarnish; Ace of Base managed to dull any remnants of Sweden's post-Abba pop sheen, and we're still waiting for Finland's answer to Robyn.

Until that glorious day, here we are with our darling Annie, looking and acting ever so much like that exchange student in high school with whom you had that lovely walk home before the hot girls informed her that associating with the likes of you was worse than class inversion. For now, Annie's semi-obscurity in America allows for an unhurried conversation, albeit sandwiched between full-day photo shoots at Paper, an East Village Radio show, and an appearance in the lobby of the Tribeca Grand hotel. She is casual but cautious; something about the aromatic piece of gum she chews throughout our conversation seems a tad trite, especially when I ask what flavor it is and she reflexively answers with Freedent cinnamon, her favorite. Rather than accepting the angle of Annie's inner publicist, and, in an effort to rescue our conversation from the techno remix tape that is the soundtrack at the Tribeca Grand, we revert to a short, yet oh-so-middle-school note-passing session-fitting for the prospective and ironic international queen of teen pop.

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