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|
| Date |
Aug 20 |
| Type |
Interview |
| Source |
The Knowledge (The Times) |
| Title |
Living the masquerade |
| Country |
UK |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Lisa Verrico/ Ross Kirton |
| Pix |
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| Text |
Goldfrapp are challenging the pop world with their many different guises, their glamourous lead singer tells Lisa Verrico
The last time I saw Alison Goldfrapp, she had a horse?s tail attached to her bottom. The time before that, she was in an air hostess outfit and dominatrix boots. On both occasions, of course, she was on stage, fronting the band that bears her name. But it is still disappointing when Goldfrapp arrives at a hip London hotel in just jeans and an overcoat. She does have on sunglasses of pop star proportions and her mass of blonde curls makes her easy to spot, but you would never know that this was a woman with a wardrobe to fill more male fantasies than an Ann Summers catalogue.
The on and off stage Goldfrapp have one trait in common, however: the icy demeanour with which the singer presides over theatrical live shows of burlesque dancers and bare-chested men in stags? heads is equally evident in person. Throughout our talk about Supernature ? the triumphant, electronic album that should take the band from pop?s lower league to the top of the charts ? Goldfrapp refuses to remove her sunglasses. Although she is pleasant enough, it is half an hour before she starts to defrost.
She is tired, understandably, of having the same old stories from her youth raked over in the press. It?s juicy stuff, but the well-spoken, convent-educated singer says that she regrets having talked about her early twenties, which were spent mostly living in London and partying hard, before she found her feet working with the trip-hop pioneer Tricky; or her defiant teenage spell in which, tabloid legend has it, she sniffed glue (?Only once,? she now insists) and stole cars (?It was a tractor?). Mostly, though, Goldfrapp?s frostiness is down to an unwillingness to classify what she routinely refers to as her ?art?. It?s a big word for a pop star, but then Goldfrapp is more than a just a singer. The dressing up, the stage shows and artwork she designs herself, and the music she creates with the Bath-based composer Will Gregory, have never slotted easily into any pop scene; certainly not one in the present.
?There aren?t many bands who work like us these days, which is probably why I?m so drawn to the 1970s and 1980s,? says Goldfrapp. ?Back then, bands seemed to build their world around them. They had a hairstyle and a dance and they were involved in the whole creative process. I loved Roxy Music because how they sounded was tied in to how they looked. And I?ve always been a big fan of old disco, which was as much about dressing up and having good moves as it was about music. Now it?s the norm to be manufactured, to be the singer who just sings and has someone else?s style handed to them. I think that may be changing again, though. I hope so.?
Goldfrapp is only partly right. The success of the New York-based Scissor Sisters last year ? their debut CD was Britain?s bestselling album ? has brought dressing up and flamboyant live shows back into fashion. But only for dance acts, and dance music is still playing second fiddle to rock. Hot new British bands such as Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs are happy to steal old sounds, but they still don?t think it is cool to look as though they have put any thought into their image. In fact Keane, who had last year?s second bestselling album, were highly embarrassed at their recent ?outing? for having been styled by an agency. For every rock band such as Franz Ferdinand who care about their clothes and practise their dancing, there are a hundred who would prefer to be Coldplay.
Goldfrapp, however, are perfectly poised for a resurgence in dance that is already under way. They may have vastly different styles and sounds, but Damon Albarn?s Gorillaz, the female rapper M.I.A. ? a hot tip for this year?s Mercury Music Prize ? and the Go! Team have harked back to an era when acts preferred to stand out from the crowd, rather than blend in. The reaction to Supernature?s slinky first single, Ooh La La, with its glam rock riffs and eye-catching choreographed video, suggests that Goldfrapp will be the next band to benefit from being different. And not just in Britain. In America, Gorillaz and M.I.A. have made a mark where the likes of Robbie Williams could not, precisely because they neither look nor sound like anyone else.
If Supernature does bring Goldfrapp mainstream success ? and given that it?s a thrilling pop record, bold and sexy from start to finish, and packed with glossy songs that are cool but quirkily camp, you certainly wouldn?t bet against it ? hers will have been a long-haul journey. A former fine art and performance art student, Goldfrapp grew up dreaming of one day becoming a successful singer, but steadfastly refusing to play join-the-dots pop. As a teenager, she quit most of the bands she joined within weeks; while at art school in London, she left a dance act to travel to Belgium on a British Council grant to sing with a man who made music for dancers.
?I always wanted to sing, but combine the visual side as well,? explains Goldfrapp, who?s now in her thirties. ?I just wasn?t quite sure how to do it. But in Belgium I really learnt about the voice and all the crazy things that you can do with it, and how what you see on stage can change how you hear music.?
Returning to Britain, she recorded with Orbital and spent two years touring with Tricky. Finally, through a friend, she met Gregory, who had been making music for films and playing saxophone.
?We were both wary of being in a regular band,? recalls Goldfrapp. ?We spent a long time checking each other out. We didn?t meet up a lot, but we sent each other music we liked and talked about things that we wanted to do that we hadn?t done with anyone else.?
Down the phone from Bath, Gregory ? who no longer appears on stage and dislikes interviews even more than Goldfrapp does ? tries to describe the pair?s way of working.
?We don?t make plans,? he says. ?And we don?t do demos. We just start somewhere and keep going. Then, suddenly, the songs appear.?
On the band?s Mercury Award-nominated debut, Felt Mountain (2000), the songs were sad and cinematic, casting Goldfrapp as a contemporary torch singer. Critics raved, and their theatrical live shows helped the album to sell more than half a million copies. They also nearly broke up the band. After a year on the road, Goldfrapp hated her music.
?We pigeonholed ourselves with that album,? she says. ?I felt as though I was in prison. Every night I wanted to scream, ?Stop, this isn?t me!?, but I couldn?t. That?s why our second album sounded so different. We needed to stick our necks out and show people that there was a lot more to us than they thought.?
The Brit-nominated follow-up, Black Cherry (2003), took the band into techno territory, spawning the hit Strict Machine. While it didn?t sell as well as Felt Mountain, it did lay the groundwork for Supernature.
?With Black Cherry, we piled on too many sounds and textures,? admits Goldfrapp. ?The songs didn?t get where we wanted them to go. With Supernature, we stripped the sounds down, so it?s more instant and more pop.?
Goldfrapp claims not to care about sales ? ?Our next album will be different again,? she insists, ?even if it loses us fans? ? but if Supernature does as well as it should, the band will have real fame to deal with for the first time. For Gregory, who is rarely photographed and is happiest in his home studio, it isn?t much of a worry.
?To me, success means I can get started on the new album sooner,? he says. ?And maybe take up a new hobby. Last year, it was algebra. I taught myself as much as I could on the subject, then at dinner parties I would get a pen and paper out and bore everyone to death. You can imagine, there were a lot of early nights. I moved on to the history of the Restoration, but now the album is out I think that I should find a new interest.?
All this, you can imagine, does not make him the stuff of a paparazzo?s dreams. But for Goldfrapp, who is also living in Bath, the idea of fame is frightening.
?I?m never recognised in the street and that?s the way I like it,? she says. ?I don?t have to brush my hair or put make-up on and I don?t disappoint people because I?m wearing trainers and not 8in heels. I?d prefer our album not to become too hip, either. I get scared when I read that we?re this month?s most fashionable band. What does that mean we?ll be next month?? Something tells me that they are not heading for the bargain bins any time soon. |
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