With an old favorite…

[Video]
[6.30]

Anthony Easton: I am always excited when a new Annie comes out, and I love the false front optimism in the most heart breaking pop, and if you add an onomatopoeic chorus somewhere there, my joy is compounded. That, this has all of this, and how it makes it almost menacing,  but also, how phrases like “sun rises, so I won’t get lost in the dark” create a metaphor that cobbles that menace, that’s smart.  It would be almost perfect, without the added sophistication. The only problem is that it’s a little long, and becomes needlessly recursive near the end. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: It’s not my fault the title looks like “Lube Jobs and Lonely Hearts,” which speaks to my interest in making this serviceable Eurodance number sexier. After the third play the undulating bass track and un-na-na-na’s get more insistent. “I think I’ll be okay,” she assures us, the track spinning round and round like a dancer who accepted too many shots.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Love the clocks conforming to the beat, and the reassuringly cozy gloom from the bass. Purportedly about the rave culture of yore, which makes this track’s baroque construction so much the better: it’s not a tribute — certainly not a recreation — more like a maturer mind’s replay.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: More like loop lines and boring ideas.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “12:30/I’m about to depart.” The night has begun, a cavalcade of bad vibes. As Norwegian public transport trundles along, Annie sits shaken and broken on the way to… somewhere. Anywhere. There’s got to be a beat on the other side, and until that appears, there’s “Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts” in her head. You can almost see the white lights flashing, those huge claps reverberating from wall to wall. With Annie, these sounds do not offer escape from the twitchiness of her words; the ability to nullify the anxiety is not on the table. Here, the club sounds are a welcome extension of bad vibes, a zone where internalized gloom is writ large as nocturnal beats. The music is unnerving and rickety, under its own spell of spookiness. But she’s not there yet. She’s stuck on public transport, keeping as calm as she can with strokes of glossolalia nonsense: “mamama oh mamama oh nanananana”.
[8]

Iain Mew: If you just go for Tube stops there isn’t really one to fit the sound of the song, but extend it to the wider DLR and Overground and it’s something midway between (a) Crystal Palace and All Saints. Only, the result is like one of those abandoned stations like Aldwych – there are cool elements to its existence but it doesn’t go anywhere.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Maybe this is because I prefer “Heartbeat” and “Anthonio” to, say, “Chewing Gum,” but this feels a bit spare to me, without any of the grace notes that makes her best songs really great. Or, more to the point, I think Annie’s songs tend to work a bit better when I don’t have to wonder which part is supposed to be the chorus.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: This is just a complete mess of musical sounds that do nothing but swirl in grey and a tune that doesn’t even do that.  Annie once cloaked her most stunning songs in shy singing and mixing (“Heartbeat” or “Bad Times”) to create strongly emotional and resonant pop, but here she’s up front and clear and awkward. In skilled hands, this could have been spooky and kind of pumping, but there’s a difference between shy (which Annie is great at) and nervous and eerie (which she is not). It’s about clubs and dancing of years gone by in the promo material but nothing in particular about “Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts” evokes those.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: The gurgling bass noises and almost-house rhythms keep it from floating off into a parousis of twee. Which, don’t get me wrong, I’d have been fine with too. It’s good to have her back. 
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Annie returns! With a haunted, touchy Xenomania track that’s not ironic, pop-baiting or twee at all! And not a single at all, but an album interlude. Maybe it’s for a concept album, where next up is Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
[6]