Funny Little Words: Annie The Clumsy

A little over halfway through Annie The Clumsy’s Vol. 1 collection, the singer plays a lovely little number about being with a lover, a lover who just overwhelms our protagonist with presumed swagger. Then, the proverbial shank to our thighs – “everything you do/makes my uterus ache/not my heart but my uterus ache.”

Everything about that explains the appeal of Annie The Clumsy, who first popped up on that latest Ano(t)raks comp, but also has a collection all her own. Part of it is her voice – the way she pronounces “uterus,” oh man. But the real intrigue here is how she subverts a sort of music that tends to get stupidly cheesy with sex. Her music is very bare bones, just her voice and (usually) ukulele, a combination that can get super cloying and cute in the wrong hands. Real talk, I’m writing this blurb in a Starbucks, and most of the songs playing here now highlight the lameness of the style, all cutesy-poo strumming mixed with Hallmark-grade sentiments. Annie The Clumsy, though, slyly focuses on sex, which makes for way more interesting stuff than typical love-letter material. “You Make My Uterus Ache” is pretty obvious, but following track “For God’s Sake” ups the stakes by being completely about how…uhhh…moist the central character gets thinking about a special someone (it plays like really awkward flirting, which maybe explains the “clumsy”). “Can I Sleep Over Tonight?” is pretty self-explanatory…but features banjo, which is a neat touch. Although not all the songs are about carnal pleasures – “Blemished Banana” may not actually be a double entendre, but rather about an actual blemished banana – the raunchier lyrics make these songs (which also sound really good) all the more interesting. Get it here, or listen below.