3 out of 5

Label: un je nes sais quoi

Produced by: Martin Vidy (recorded and mixed by)

If I could read French, or was more confident in the Google translation, I might be able to tell you more about ‘Anna,’ a band or pseudonym I believe is just one person – Martin Vidy – as I can’t really confirm whether or not that is the case. If it is, it’s a pretty impressive act: using an 8-track recording and (maybe?) digital drums, Vidy has pieced together some oddball, psychedelic-tinged indie pop, hazy and sing-songy like an Elephant 6 associate, but tweaked in some very particular ways that I feel like you can only get away with when you’re iterating on your own material. That, importantly, was the only thing that clued me into this potentially being a solo act: it just goes some places that a group might not: sounds a divergences that, for whatever reason, feel like someone tinkering with a song on their lonesome and trying to figure out how to make it sound more “full.” Meaning if Anna actually is a whole band, this stuff still sounds pretty good, with the singer’s nasally voice nicely varied across ten lo-fi jams that strum and riff with a bit of nervy edge, meeting somewhere between Flaming Lips weirdo folk-rock and Impossible Shapes’ blissed out hymns.

The core of this is (as I’m understanding it) Vidy, and a thin-sounding guitar, but the ‘thinness’ complements Vidy’s voice well, a tradeoffs between ho-hum melodies and weirder indie rock affectations interestingly. Here and there we get very bleep-bloopy tones and some good beats; the album just has a really nice sense of motion, never hurried but never lagging at any given point.

On the flipside, Vidy tends not to stick around on a song section for long enough to really make it something specific and memorable; ‘May’ has a recognizable sound, but no real standout tracks, and lyrics which trawl through interesting but somewhat in specific thoughts. And unfortunately, this does really prevent the album from being a Flaming Lips or Shapes-like record, which leave you with niggling melodies and some turns of phrase or imagery that bear repeating. Still, Anna’s May is surely worth a spin, as there’s a certain free-wheeling vibe to it that helps set it apart from the healthy crop of kooky lo-fi rockers out there, striking a balance between full-band confidence and solo-act experimentation.