Goldfrapp
Supernature
Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s follow up to 2003’s ‘Black Cherry’ goes even further into the electro inspired territory they entered on that release. This, their third album, is described by the duo as "glam noir" and features a plethora of knowing nods and winks to 70s glam rock and 80s synthpop, while Goldfrapp’s seductive vocals shine through the thumping electronic beats. Includes the single ‘Ooh La La’.
Tracks:
01 Ooh La La
02 Lovely 2 C U
03 Ride A White Horse
04 You Never Know
05 Let It Take You
06 Fly Me Away
07 Slide In
08 Koko
09 Satin Chic
10 Time Out From The World
11 Number 1
Bath, England’s singer/composer/keyboardist Allison Goldfrapp began exploring music as a part of her studies as a Fine Art Painting major at Middlesex University, mixing sound, visuals, and performances in her installation pieces. While she was still in college, she appeared on her friend Tricky’s 1995 debut Maxinquaye, which led to appearances on albums from other cutting-edge electronic artists, including Orbital’s Snivilisation and Add N to X’s Avant Hard. By the late ’90s, Goldfrapp began honing her own compositions; one of her friends passed some of her demos on to composer Will Gregory. Finding much in common in their musical tastes and approaches, the duo took Allison’s surname as the name for their collaboration. After signing to Mute in 1999, Goldfrapp delivered their debut album, Felt Mountain, in fall 2000. Felt Mountain went on to nearly universal acclaim and spawned several singles, including the Utopia Genetically Enriched EP, which arrived in early 2001. After spending most of that year touring, Goldfrapp spent most of 2002 recording and returned with Black Cherry in spring 2003. 2005 saw the release of the Ooh La La single and the full-length Supernature, both of which continued the disco and glam-rock influences of the duo’s previous album.
Goldfrapp
Supernature
[Mute; 2005]
I should probably like this more than I actually do. Who doesn’t want to get behind Alison Goldfrapp and company? She’s nothing if not on the ball, having transformed herself from elegant mid-90s Orbital cooer to elegant late-90s spook to an equally timely role– something like a cross between Kylie Minogue and PJ Harvey, between Annie and Siouxsie Sioux, between Rachel Stevens and Beth Gibbons, the evil-twin model of the shimmery dancefloor princess-bot. And Supernature kicks off with that flag flying high, on "Ooh La La": some hard schaffel, some hand-clapping glam-rock stomp, some dangerously icy taunting, and enough Germanic electro-house action to make you want to drop it like it’s cold, ruthlessly efficient, and strangely angular. Why do I have a sick suspicion that this is how awesome Peaches thinks she sounds?
So I do half-go for it, from that first rush of ice to the veins to the dots of old-model cabaret spook that crop up later, and from there through the buzz and pulse of the inbetween. Witchy English vibes, analog synth surgery, superhuman icy-vulnerable vocals, and production that sounds alternately like high-polish chrome and a sucking black hole: What more do I usually ask for?
Well, something, obviously, because somewhere along the line I lose it. Maybe it’s the part where Alison wants to "ride on a white horse," though I suppose there’s both a half-decent hero/heroin joke and a T. Rex reference in there. Maybe it’s the part where I remember that I have Gary Numan and Siouxsie albums I still haven’t listened to it enough. Or maybe it’s just the peculiar plaint of the electro dance-pop full-length: the sound of those mid-tempo album-completing tracks. They’re effortlessly organized, full of so much dense trebly shimmer and helium swooning and sighing that you actually zone out and stop hearing them, right up until you realize your ears hurt a little from taking it all in. They’re loads of effort poured into a product that winds up sounding like nothing in particular, immaculate synth arrangements not quite making up for the fact that the song will neither bang and swell nor relax into a dreamy lull. If Alison were Kylie, she could at least spice things up by switching modes– sunny here, earnest here, then back to machine-tooled intimidation. Alison, being Alison, has to stay all witchy all the time.
And there’s the non-shocker: This is sure to sound better in the variegated sweep of a good DJ mix– something that’s not, given the present currency of "electro-house," so difficult to come across. The bangers here will sound fab on the pop ends of said mixes, "Ooh La La" owning all. The tracks that lapse back into Goldfrapp’s old Felt Mountain electronic-chanteuse mold will sound fine in your apartment. ("U Never Know" and "Let it Take You" make a gorgeous break from the ultra-dense buzz, getting progressively softer, silkier, and more minimal.) But plenty of these tracks keep feeling like exercises: too thick and melodic to work like dance music, but with melodies that refuse to stick as satisfyingly as pop.
Which makes this pretty much what you’d expect: the prime-time flagship of glammy electroid dancefloor pop, curiously expensive-sounding and accessible to all, but strangely stripped of the functionalism of the dance record and the full thrills of pop. Sometimes that lands it in the sweet spot. Just as often, though, it seems to have forgotten what in the world it was meant to offer in the first place.
Posted to Pitchfork by Nitsuh Abebe on September 01, 2005.