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Date February 15
Type Interview
Source The Sun
Title 'Sandals may be way forward'
Country England, UK
Journalist/Photographer Simon Cosyns/ Serge Leblon
Pix   
Text WHEN Alison Goldfrapp lent her breathy moan to Ooh La La a couple of years ago, she looked every inch the disco queen.

With her ravishing cloud of blonde curls, impossibly high platforms, slinky black bell-bottom flairs, she cut a vivid image... Thirties Euro sleaze, Seventies glam rock, Noughties, er, naughtiness.

She oozed sex appeal but were we seeing the real Alison?

“I felt I’d invented this image for myself which I didn’t always feel comfortable with,” she suggests.

“On stage, I was fine but when I came off it became ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Yes, I am only 5ft 2in and no I don’t walk round the kitchen like this at home’.

“I was beginning not to really recognise myself. The ‘on-stage’ and the ‘off-stage’ were getting a bit confusing. Then it all combined with my personal life changing quite radically.”

Her view might explain the latest chapter in the incredible musical journey of Goldfrapp, the outfit she founded with Will Gregory in 1999. (“No, it’s not that long! I don’t want to think of it,” says Alison at one point during the interview.)

Where the last album was a soundtrack to neon-lit nightclubs, new album Seventh Tree finds its home in the English countryside among the animals, the birds, the trees under the sun and the stars.

An idyllic retreat from the dancefloor and the perfect remedy for a broken relationship.

Despite Supernature’s commercial success, Alison explains the almost devil-may-care attitude behind the follow-up.

Gorgeous
“Honestly, I really didn’t bloody care. I just thought ‘F*** it’, I just want to do something that I feel good about ’cos I genuinely thought no one’s going to be f****** interested in us.”

But the hugely positive reaction from those who’ve heard it brings a tangible sense of relief.

“It’s great people like it,” she says. “I did think no one’s going to buy the album, so how do we keep living then? I’ve just bought a house and I’ve got a mortgage. I seriously thought ‘Oh, s**t, I’ve got to do a few commercials or something’.”

The album shouldn’t really come as a surprise, for each Goldfrapp album has been a very distinct, very different package, with this gorgeous songcycle being no exception.

The pair approve of me comparing the listening experience to a long, relaxing Radox bath just like the telly adverts of Seventies.

They got a Mercury Prize nomination for hauntingly beautiful debut album Felt Mountain.

Don’t bet against them going all the way this time for the sensual delights of Seventh Tree.

When I meet Alison and Will in the peaceful daytime surroundings of The Union club in London’s Soho, I find Alison in hilariously self-deprecating form.

And it seems the expression “lovely bloke” was invented for the gentle and rarely-seen Will.

Alison begins the Seventh Tree story: “We were quite eager to do something that was a bit more intimate and stripped down. Especially after touring, I think we realised we’d invented this quite bombastic, hard sound.

“We couldn’t really lose doing it live because it was hands in the air and great fun.

“But, as musicians, you want to try out different things. You’re always trying to find new sounds.”

Will adds: “Maybe each of our albums is a kind of exorcism of itself. When we did Felt Mountain, we tried to do some other Felt Mountain songs but we realised that it was actually out of our system.

“We needed something else to get excited about.”

So, were Goldfrapp fans particularly broad-minded?

“I don’t know,” muses Will. “Perhaps ‘long suffering’ are the words you’re looking for!

“I’m broad-minded though and just look at the average person’s record collection. It’s like nourishment. You can’t just live on one diet otherwise you’d be very bored.” I wondered how the glam set would react to the folkiness of Seventh Tree on the forthcoming tour.

Alison says: “Well, they probably won’t come to us or maybe they’ll turn up as bush men, probably a few more socks and sandals rather than nine-inch Perspex heels.”

How about her own attire?

“You may laugh but those sandals might pop out. I have injured my back and I’m not allowed to wear heels so sandals may be the way forward.”

Clowns
As is usual with Goldfrapp albums, Seventh Tree was recorded in the wilds of Wiltshire near Bath, the title coming to Alison in a dream. This time the surroundings suit the sounds more than ever before.

It all begins with the serene Clowns, the sort of mellow folk that was all the rage in the late Sixties.

You can just picture hippies in kaftans and sandals lighting up spliffs and saying “Peace, man.”

The song inspired Alison to don pierrot and harlequin outfits for the album photo-shoots.

“Clowns have an image that is slightly freaky and there’s lots of other imagery in there such as the owl.”

And these lines from a sonnet accompanying Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons could equally apply to the “land of blue and gold” of second song Little Bird: “We hear the cuckoo’s voice; then sweet songs of the turtledove and finch are heard. Soft breezes stir the air.”

Alison and Will have found themselves using the word "psychedelic” a lot in relation to that song.

The singer says: “We’ve been inspired by this idea of paganism and the surreal themes in traditional English children’s books. I mean, Victorians were taking loads of drugs, weren’t they?”

Another interesting influence on the album’s sound comes from the type of stuff the musical partners were listening to in the run-up to the recording sessions.

Alison says: “I was listening to a lot of Minnie Ripperton who I really love because of the string arrangements.

“Slightly folky, a bit soully with that tradition of Sixties orchestration. Then we listened to a bit of Nick Drake as well.”

One song that would sit on Supernature almost as well as it does on Seventh Tree is the first single A&E, which is set in the more tumultuous surroundings of a hospital.

Alison reveals the story behind the song: “It was inspired by a few hours I had in A&E on a Saturday afternoon.


“It was nothing serious but I remember they pumped me up with loads of painkillers.

“I was standing there looking at all these rugby players coming in on trolleys — arms up there, noses round there.

“They were in those weird green gowns they make you wear and it was all a bit surreal.

“And I suppose A&E is a sort of metaphor for a relationship that was going horribly wrong. That’s all mixed up in the song too.”

On first listen, the song Happiness sounds sickeningly happy but there’s a dark undercurrent.

Will says: “It’s got that kids, mums and dads singalong feel at the end but I think it’s not quite as happy as all that.”

Alison agrees. “What a wonderful idea but how the hell do you get happy? What is happy and how bloody long is it going to take to get really happy.

“It’s something that we’re all trying to strive for but there’s the idea that you can’t buy happiness.”

Four widely varying but consistently fine albums into their Goldfrapp careers, it seems there’s plenty of life in Alison and Will’s creative partnership.

“Maybe there will come a time when we both write a bunch of songs and go ‘ugh’ and that would really be the end,” says Will.

But Alison adds: “As long as you feel you’re not getting bored with music, the world is your oyster. Music can be absolutely anything.”

Hear the modern pastoral symphony that is Seventh Tree and you’ll be left thinking music is absolutely everything.

 
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