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MELANCHOLY SKY
8 Jan 2012
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THE SINGLES
6 Feb 2012 |
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| Date |
August 11 |
| Type |
Paper |
| Source |
The Daily Telegraph |
| Title |
Blonde ambition |
| Country |
UK |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Bernadette McNulty/ Ross Kirton |
| Pix |
 |
| Text |
Goldfrapp are just about to release their most confident album yet, but while Will Gregory loves riding the success, singer Alison Goldfrapp is still worried.
In gold platform shoes and skin-tight all-in-one, standing with her legs apart, Alison Goldfrapp waits.
Even on stage she is dwarfed by the cameras, the lights, the Clockwork Orange-styled backing band, the dancers dressed as disco horses with glitterball heads and tassled hooves. She looks like a child. But, like all the proper pop stars - like Prince, like Madonna, like Kylie - being so small means she fits perfectly inside the television.
As the drum track starts, in the backstage room, musical partner Will Gregory watches as everyone turns to stare at her on the giant screen. "I love to look at people's reactions to the music. It's the first time I get to see what they think." He prefers to look, and she prefers to be looked at. They're the perfect match.
After a long winter holed up in their secluded Wiltshire studio, Goldfrapp are about to unleash their third album on a very eager audience. Supernature is their shiniest, poppiest, most swaggering piece of work yet - inspired by T-Rex, Studio 54, ELO and Outkast. "We had to keep moving on or we would have bored each other," says Will.
It joins up the dots between their first album, Felt Mountain (all trip-hop beats, cinematic strings and siren-call vocals) and wildly different second album Black Cherry (an exercise in whip-cracking, dystopian electro) to create a glam-rock disco monster.
"We're quite excited about it," confesses Will, as they begin the first TV promotions for the songs. "We didn't set out to make our big pop album. We just stripped everything down. Ooh la la doesn't even have a harmony; it has the same note played throughout it - bam, bam, bam - like the old glam-rock tracks. We wanted to create that ironic, ultra-glossy feel that would sound good on the radio."
And, so far, they seem to have perfected the formula. First single Ooh la la has been lapped up by radio stations, giving the band their highest-ever airplay position. This could be Goldfrapp's biggest moment.
Between the indie-boy domination of the Mercury nominations and the somnambulant state of dance music, the pop world craves some dangerous glamour, and, since their emergence from the Bristol trip-hop scene of the late '90s, Goldfrapp have always been determined to provide it.
"When we started, everyone was very serious about the music, but we wanted to put the latex on because music is about having a laugh and getting down. Glam-rock inspired us, but you don't see that spirit now."
Getting that glam look right was important enough for Alison that for the Ooh la la video she got herself sewn so tightly into a bell-bottomed catsuit that she couldn't go to the toilet and had to pee in a cup.
There's no dressing up for Will. The former film score composer is happily cast as the anonymous Wizard of Oz figure in the duo, creating the music with Alison but never performing it with her. "The whole thing has been constructed with the focus on Alison: that is why it is called Goldfrapp. It was about putting her in the centre and finding a context for her voice and the terrific range of things she can do with it."
Alison, with her glaring beauty, golden locks and unworldly voice seems like she was born to the part. She looks like she comes from another century, with the face of a Victorian doll and wide Jackie O eyes that are almost too big for her face but -are hypnotising on camera.
With all that strutting and pouting and dressing-up, you'd think she loved the attention but, when she appears backstage, she practically hides behind Will and bristles when questions turn on her. "There is a focus on me and I like the dressing-up, but I don't do it to be sexy. Music has always been visual for me, with colours and textures and dramatic narratives, and that is what I like creating. Of course, I feel sexy sometimes, but sometimes I feel like an old sack."
All the mythology around Alison does make her seem like a male fantasy; the convent-girl gone bad who ended up glue-sniffing and stealing tractors, followed by years of dope-smoking frustration trying to break through as backing vocalist to Orbital and Tricky before Goldfrapp's success turned everything around.
She vacillates between fighting and fuelling the legend, one minute telling tales of racing motorbikes when she was 13, the next scorning people's interest in her "long gone" past. She doesn't care what people think, she says. She's learnt to accept the intrusion as the price of artistic liberty. The only thing she really regrets, she says, is that her beloved father didn't get to see her success before he died. "All he got was the rebellion bit. He was my inspiration and I miss him a lot."
Will doesn't mind that fame came so suddenly and so late for them. "Success just meant people agreed with me and gave us the confidence to carry on developing our own style musically. Neither of us would have wanted success in our twenties."
Alison says it's cured her unhappiness and given her creative freedom, but the years of struggle have scarred her. "I do worry about what would happen if it all went wrong. I get scared if people don't like the album. And one day my looks will go, and people will say, God, look at the state of her. Ultimately, it will all fall apart."
For every moment of melancholy, though, there is an equal and opposite moment of defiance. She scoffs at the idea of Supernature getting to number one. "No chance with that guy whining, 'You're Beautiful' ", and nothing riles her more than being labelled the "alternative Kylie". "We don't have anything in common apart from the fact that we are female. I'm not that kitsch popette. I write all my songs. And she's a lot shorter then me."
Alison has worked long and hard to be in control and won't play nice to please anyone. "I had to justify my existence for so long. Interviewers would talk to Will about the music and then turn to me and tell me what a pretty frock I was wearing."
But despite her spiky independence, she has no intention of going solo yet. "Will is my ally. I can't imagine making music without him. There's a musical connection I haven't found with anyone else. I feel satisfied with what I'm doing now." |
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