ANET

You could say there’s an autobiographical message attached to the title of Annette Ducharme’s new album, Talented Girl, a feeling of self-belief that keeps her motivated through a career that has had its share of ups and downs.Her past three albums -Sanctuary, Bloom and Tortured - have been released on a series of independent labels with varied levels of success and exposure. Annette has found a great deal of success on the internet and even shortened her name to Anet. After five predominantly self-released albums, Ducharme is still striving for a creative pinnacle she believes has yet to be reached. The Windsor native has had her share of moments in the spotlight.The original album title was Toilet Trained and the album cover depicts a topless Ducharme sitting provocatively on a toilet seat.A feisty individual with a never-say-die attitude, Ducharme is determined to keep hacking away. Her music has been featured on the soundtrack to the movie Urban Legend, on various episodes of MTV Undressed and she contributed the theme song to CBC’s teen series, Edgemont.“I just need a break”, she laughs.”Any kind of break will do. If I put enough pokers in the fire one of them will generate a spark.That’s all I can ask for. I thank God every day for all of it”. - ACCESS PRESS - Keith Sharp

Annette Ducharme fully admts she has a problem with commitment. The chameleon-like performer - whose current incarnation is that of a dominatrix Betty Boop who sings like Garbage’s Shirley Manson-can’t keep her mind fixed on any particular musical idea longer than a year or two, sometimes even less.Ducharme doesn’t lament her lack of focus, however she’s able to sleep well at night knowing the music she creates is of her own doing. “I don’t know if that will ever change,” she says on the line from her home in Vancouver.I’m all over the place. I really enjoy departing from what I do so when I come back to it, it feels fresh.” Ducharme’s new project, the punk alt-rock band Anet, is the latest left turn for the Windsor native.Notoriety as a roots singer earned Ducharme immediate acclaim and her 1989 debut, Blue Girl, eventually spawned two Top Ten singles. But it was during the recording of her next album that she truly became a heavyweight in the Canadian music industry. Her partner and producer, John Webster, keyboardist on Aerosmith, David Bowie, Suicidal Tendencies cd's, to name a mere few, had inadvertently played one of her in-progress compositions for friend Tom Cochrane, who was lurking around Vancouver’s Mushroom Studios during the recording of his own album, Mad Mad World. Cochrane loved what he heard and the song - Sinking Like a Sunset - eventually became a million-selling radio staple for him. The anthem’s inclusion on Mad Mad World assured Ducharme a place in Canadian songwriting history when it became one of the most played songs on Canadian radio in 1992. Ducharme rose to international fame quickly thereafter. An award-winning run in the early ‘90s (Juno Award nominations, Much Music Video Awards, and two SOCAN Songwriter Awards for Pop Song of the Year) kept her profile steady if somewhat low-key.But it wasn’t always rosy, despite a tour with John Lee Hooker and further songwriting collaborations with Cochrane, David Gogo, Lawrence Gowan, Barney Bentall and the Paperboys. She now feels the constant stream of major record labels she toiled for was at the root of the problem. Even when she was signed to giants of the industry such as Sony and EMI, she was the one doing the label’s grunt-work, calling radio stations asking them to play her songs and requesting video play with programmers at MuchMusic. It’s been a few years since Ducharme has released a record. However, she is just days away from signing with a new manager to oversee her equally new contract with Sextant Records, the Canadian label that released Anet’s debut, Talented Girl.Ducharme still won’t let up on being a one-woman promotional dynamo. “I don’t think I will ever completely let that side of me go. “I've done so much of it already, so I do understand the innerworkings of promotion where I can tell when the ball is being tossed or dropped. She’ll need to work at promoting herself more than ever these days. With a new album and image that seems far removed from her past, Ducharme’s old fans will have to dig deep to find her former songwriting habits - especially considering the Bif Naked glam-pop her new music employs.“I’m still as tortured as ever, no matter where I am,” Ducharme maintains. “Nothing changes on that front. I’m not angry, just tortured, and this new music makes me feel alive. I get out all my anxieties with it.”Vancouver played a large part in the creation of Talented Girl, she says. It’s been her home since the mid ‘90’s, but having been a nomad prior to that - high school and hitchiked to California as a teen - the city’s placid environment has started to chip away at her. “I find it quiet on a lot of fronts. Artistically speaking, there’s not that much energy floating around in the ether here. It’s such a clean and beautiful city, but you’re lacking some of the culture that comes with the aging of a city and the compression of people en masse, and the types of people that go to big cities. But environmentally, you can’t beat it.There’s always been a political edge to Ducharme’s work, and her actions have backed it up.  She’s a veteran of the Kumbaya tour, a fundraiser for people with AIDS, and she’s lent her support to fundraisers from Victoria to Toronto.The spunky singer even travelled to Africa last year to entertain Canadian, Russian and Dutch troops during a 10-day tour of Eritrea, which was being ravaged by civil war at the time. “That was the best audience. It was men for the most part, and they loved it. What can I say? I loved it too. There were such genuine and sincere guys.” - Mike Devlin - Victoria Times