It’s impossible to overstate how much the early 2000s records of Goldfrapp – the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory – set the tone for the whole rest of the 21st century. The electroclash scene had already ushered in an Eternal Eighties of electropop revival, but Goldfrapp professionalised it, added heavyweight songwriting skill and superstar vocal personality.
They drew in the production gloss of precursors like Trevor Horn and William Orbit, instantly influenced existing stars like Kylie and Madonna, and created an updated template for synth pop that you can ear echoing through the biggest names to this day.
Solo and in the duo, Alison G has covered diverse ground, including cosmic folk and movie style torch songs (it’s a crime she’s never had a bond theme). But here she’s back in what seems like her comfort zone: back surrounded by smooth, fizzing synthesizers that evoke film of flying above clouds, using all the registers of her velvet voice and generally sounding super-deluxe. The music chugs along with a natural sense of its own history and present, naturally tracing the lines through Bronski Beat and the Pet Shop Boys through the birth of trance and through into that eternal Eighties of this century.
Obviously, she’s very good at this. She sings about heightened senses, about eroticising sound, about sublime glitterball moments on the dancefloor, and at any given moment it’s more than enough to get you tingling, swaying, imagining that sense of flight. But it seems like she’s so much in her comfort place it becomes a bit rote: there’s very little variation in tempo, energy level or texture, and it’s more about groove than hook so it’s hard for any of the songs to leap out as mega memorable. It’s hard to begrudge Goldfrapp doing what she’s good at, but here’s hoping after a rest in her comfort zone she’s going to cut loose a bit more in future.
Listen to "Find Xanadu":
