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Date February 4
Type Interview
Source Pitchfork
Title Interview: Goldfrapp
Country USA
Journalist/Photographer Stephen Trousse/ Serge Leblon
Pix   
Text Following Soft Cell, Eurythmics, and Pet Shop Boys, Goldfrapp may be the last of the great eccentric English avant-pop duos. Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory met in 1999, when both were already in their 30s, having previously worked respectively as a performance artist/session singer and a sountrack composer. Since then it seems like they have been making up for lost time, with four albums in eight years, spanning lush cinematic dreamscapes (Felt Mountain, 2000), darkly delicious sado-pop (Black Cherry, 2002), decadently glamorous turbodisco (Supernature, 2005), and now, with Seventh Tree, a kind of pastoral rehab record. The group have always recorded out in the English countryside of Somerset, but this their first record that carries traces of those surroundings, from the Nick Drake strings of "Clowns", through the Syd Barrett nursery rhyme of "Little Bird" and the rural daydream of "Caravan Girl". On the eve of their first gig they spoke to Pitchfork over the phone from their London office.

Pitchfork: After the huge success of Supernature, was it daunting to follow it up? Was Seventh Tree a difficult record to make?

Will Gregory: Sort of...They're all difficult, aren't they?

Alison Goldfrapp: Yes, I think making an album is a difficult thing.

Pitchfork: I remember reading that after touring Felt Mountain when you started out, you got bored with the songs and built up a kind of head of steam to go and make the completely different Black Cherry...Did you feel the same way after promoting Supernature for so long?

AG: No, I think that's been misinterpreted a little bit. What we actually said was that after touring for a year we got frustrated with those songs, because we only had nine songs to play. So it was a case of wanting to branch out and do more writing. It was about touring rather than making the actual album. You don't get bored making an album.

Pitchfork: "Ooh La La" in particular seemed to be unavoidable for a while a few years ago-- it was all over TV, on the radio, in shops...Does that feel like an artistic triumph or does it becomea bit of a nightmare?

AG: I was really chuffed you know?! I've bought a house which I didn't have before, so I'm not complaining. Seriously, I think it's great!

WG: It's very exciting.There's part of you thinks, "My god, I'm responsible for people listening to this particular piece of music" and part of me feels a bit guilty about that. But part of me thinks, "Yes, world domination, they should listen to it. Good! Good!" But it's a bit like seeing yourself on television-- it makes you blush the first few times...

Pitchfork: You could also hear that sound kind of filter down through the rest of pop, via people like Madonna, Xenomania-- you wind up with a Sugababes song sounding a bit like Supernature...How do you feel about that?

AG: [curtly] Yeah, we're doing something else now.

Pitchfork: When did you get the first inkling of the kind of atmosphere or soundworld you wanted to do with Seventh Tree?

AG: I think this one's been brewing for a while. A kind of aesthetic or sound that we've always been interested in-- which is probably why we made Felt Mountain in the first place. And even though it's very different from Felt Mountain, it's a soundworld that we're fond of. And we've talked for a long while about doing stuff with harps and doing something more intimate. And as a result of touring Supernature for so long, it felt time to do something that had more space, and was a bit quieter.

Pitchfork: The advance word was that you had decided to make a folk record...

WG: Yes, there was a point where we did think-- are we going folk? And then we started getting a load of folk albums and listening to them...and realized we weren't-- which was reassuring. There are a couple of things like Nick Drake-- but that's more of an atmosphere rather than a style...

Pitchfork: Yes, I can hear a bit of that kind of Robert Kirby string arrangement feel to the first song on the record, "Clowns"...

WG: Oh yeah! Robert Kirby's string arrangements are brilliant-- they're so lovely. That became a of a goal, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you could like-- if we could get strings that sounded anything like that. And we never did, and it was probably wrong to even try. But yeah, they're lovely...

AG: I think also what I like about Nick Drake is that he makes me think of England, you know? English countryside, ruralness-- which a lot of folk music does. Well, good folk music does-- more the American stuff. There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing. But with Nick Drake there's such an atmosphere to it, which is why so many people like it.

Pitchfork: I suppose Kate Bush is another connection between you and that kind of Englishnes...

AG: [witheringly] Really? Well, that's very nice, we're flattered. Good old Kate. Yeah, I think we're very fond of a certain kind of Englishness, without getting too into it. Our sound is still quite a European sound.

Pitchfork: Were the record company happy for you to change direction so radically? It used to be that arty British pop groups would change their look and their sound with every album. These days people are less likely to mess with successful formula.

WG: Yeah, we're very lucky in that we've got a record company who are keen to experiment and try different things. I think in some ways we were more scared about it than they were. We were kind of thinking, "What are we doing?". And we played them a couple of tracks, early demos, and they loved it. So that was great. Because I think our record company are quite unusual like that-- they like music, and they like being stimulated. They're quite like us, aren't they?

Pitchfork: I know that you've been working on the soundtrack to He Who Gets Slapped [a 1920s silent movie about clowns starring Lon Chaney], Will. And, Alison, you've kind of dressed up in a clown outfit for the cover. And the first track on the album is called "Clowns"? Was this a motif that you arrived at independently?

AG: I think it was a zeitgeist moment!

Pitchfork: Is the pop industry a bit of a circus? Is the clown in the country on the cover about wanting to escape that?

WG: Sometimes you do live in a caravan, don't you Alison?

AG: And you're surrounded by freaks...

WG: And you're walking on a high wire a lot of the time...The analogy could run and run I think!

Funnily enough Alison had been doing some research into clowns through the ages, hadn't you?

AG: Yeah-- I was interested in how clowns had been portrayed in art. That was last year, so I didn't even know that Will had been working on this film about clowns at this point.

WG: And they had some of the stills from the film in the book you were reading, didn't they? It was like, ah-- I've seen that before.

Pitchfork: You've always recorded in the country, but it's never quite filtered through into the music like it does on the new record...

WG: Just outside of Bath, in the Somerset countryside. It was a happy experience, yeah. The thing is, writing an album, it sort of seems it must be dependent on where you are, but a lot of it is just being left alone, to get on with it. It's a good reason for being in the country because you don't get any distractions. Countryside, a lot of it is just about getting your head cleared out of all the background noise of daily life. So I think we tend to be quite monkish and isolated. And that helps you get right into it.

Pitchfork: After the glamorous disco fantasy of Supernature, the new record could almost be called Human Nature. A lot of people are going to see Seventh Tree as a more personal and even confessional record. Does it feel more personal to you? Are you being any more direct? Or is it just another aspect of your character?

AG: Well, Supernature wasn't just a character and nor was Black Cherry, so that's slightly insulting...

Pitchfork: I'm not implying you're playing a role...

AG: Saying that you've got acoustic instruments and that's traditional and so people will think it's more intimate, that will always be the case. It's a more intimate sound, so it's going to sound more direct whatever you're singing about. I mean, it is a more personal record. But I think by the nature of having a voice that is more upfront and the way the vocals are set against the music, it's always going to feel more personal, even if the lyrics weren't, if you know what I mean? So it has it's moments of being more intimate or being personal, it's true. Some of it's confessional, but some of it is complete and utter gobbledeegook!

Pitchfork: How do you find your voice is changing as you get older?

AG: My voice is getting knackered! Like every other part of my body! I'm quite lucky, I've got a quite a versatile range. So I haven't really noticed anything. If anything it's got higher.

Pitchfork: Are you looking forward to getting back on the road?

AG: Yeah, we are looking forward to it. We're looking forward to playing the first gig at the Union Chapel in London, it's very special. We did one of our first gigs as Goldfrapp there. It was quite weird, the first time we played there it seemed massive, but now we've been back it seems tiny! It's very strange.

 
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