Anna Oxygen
Issue #27
This is an Exercise (Kill Rock Stars)
By Andrea Benvenuto
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
As the follow-up to her 2003 debut, All Your Faded Things, Anna Oxygen’s new album offers further ’80s-inspired electropop less concerned with trends of the day than its creator’s artistic vision. If you can get down with Oxygen’s seriously dramatic vocals (often compared to the crooning of British pop singer Alison Moyet), This is an Exercise is a 12-song dance party with only the rare misstep.
Swelling strings and driving beats mark the stirring instrumental “March of Human,” and Oxygen’s fellow Pacific Northwesterner and Evergreen State College alumna Mirah provides guest vocals on “Dream. Dream. Dreams.” “Hypertension,” “Walk,” and “Psychic Rainbow” marry oddly intriguing themes with dark, throbbing soundscapes, while the haunting “Willow Song” (the only non-Oxygen-penned track) slows things down a bit toward the end of the album.
Amid such moments of ingenuity, This is an Exercise remains a work of strange beauty. The male-female dialogue of “Mechanical Fish” could be, depending on your point of view, either hilarious or hilariously ridiculous (lesson learned: “Real fish aren’t going to have any more perspective on themselves than mechanical fish, and that is just a fact”). Conversely, the robot voice on “This is…” provides an effective foil to Oxygen’s human vocals and may provoke an unexpected sing-along.
Like K Records newcomer Tender Forever, Oxygen has a talent for infusing synth-driven pop with a unique female personality. If doing so is an exercise, Anna Oxygen must be quite fit.
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