Reminiscing on the countless albums that have been signposted as eighties nostalgia, it’s striking how few of them actually sound like anything from that decade. Sure, the drums are loaded with gated reverb, the synth modules are preset to soft tones that were disowned in the nineties, fade-outs are a thing again, and the saxophone is suddenly an acceptable replacement for the electric guitar.

What’s perhaps unsurprising is that all these records represent exactly what they are: a loving pastiche recreated from memories, a tribute rather than a precise facsimile. Anna Lotterud – AKA the vocal half of pop duo Anna of the North – was born in the summer of 1989, a few months before Taylor Swift. On debut album Lovers, she calls back to an era she couldn’t possibly remember, but her nostalgia forms part of a cultural renaissance that now merits its own chapter in pop history.

Continue reading at Drowned in Sound