Annabelle Chairlegs
Waking Up
(TODO Records)
3/5
Anyone that grew up in the ’90s like I did would be forgiven for wondering if they had ricocheted back through time while listening to Annabelle Chairlegs’ new album, Waking Up. Those were the days when DayGlo-coloured pleather covered everything, and soft breathy lyrics layered comfortably over gritty bass hooks, facts not lost on Annabelle Chairlegs, the inexplicably named project from Austin, Texas.
The band are fronted by Lindsey Mackin, whose voice is by turns dulcet and sultry. The album was produced by Ty Segall, so that’s neat, and definitely fits the vibe.
Employing the same tricks that bands like Garbage and Imperial Teen are so enamoured of—like mechanically assisted vocal fry and dissonant guitar riffs worthy of an episode of The X Files—Annabelle Chairlegs may be fashionably late to the party, but they fit right in with the aforementioned bands. The resurgence of ’90s tropes is not just limited to butterfly clips and soaking wet pant legs, and tracks like “Heavy Sleeper” remind us all about the simmering apathy and blatantly, hedonistically commercialized glitz of the industrialization of youth by the MTV generation.
“Concrete Trees” will make you want to throw on some Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers and some blue eyeshadow and make your way down to the parking lot behind the Kmart, because Mackin and crew are here to party like it’s 1999.
But wait, there’s more—just when you’re melting into your apathetic puddle of CK One-scented nostalgia, we take a sharp left and find ourselves in a blissfully soft-focused dreamscape that would make The Cardigans and Six-Pence None the Richer swoon with tracks like “Ice Cream on the Beach,” where Mackin sings dreamily about her one true love over a frolicking uptempo guitar that feels like a minuet that got bitten by the Y2K frenzy.
If you want Courtney Love-style rage that is tempered with a bit of Spice Girls joi de vivre, look no further than Annabelle Chairlegs. Although I still think that’s a silly name.
-Nik Ovstaas, student editor