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6 Feb 2012 |
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|
| Date |
February 22 |
| Type |
Review |
| Source |
The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Title |
Seventh Tree |
| Country |
Australia |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Bernard Zuel/Serge Leblon |
| Pix |
 |
| Text |
There are no certainties with the English duo, Goldfrapp.
There are no certainties with the English duo, Goldfrapp. The first album, Felt Mountain, was a glistening, shimmering soundscape, ethereal and dangerous at the same time. The atmospherics were dreamy but the torch-song heart was always visible and the publicity photos had singer and lyricist Alison Goldfrapp's big eyes staring out from under big furs.
Album No. 2, Black Cherry, turned on its heels. Goldfrapp and music partner Will Gregory made a glam rock-meets-disco record with added S&M. That time the packaging looked straight out of art school (where she had spent a few boozy, druggy years) and the image was a mix of Dietrich vamp and Cyndi Lauper coquettish flair.
By the third album, 2005's Supernature, it was all dance club all the time - think Kylie Minogue with brains - but few convincing tunes.
All that glitter has gone for Seventh Tree. And for me at least, it's a welcome move, as here is a chance to indulge and revel in something deliciously attractive.
In place of micro shorts and maxi beats we find something closer in spirit to Felt Mountain as Gregory and Goldfrapp rediscover atmosphere, beds of strings and wandering breeze vocals. Adding acoustic guitars for the first time, they set free the kind of folkish gentleness we've seen from resurrected '60s hippie Vashti Bunyan, and somehow make the listener imagine what it would have been like had Kate Bush sung with the Beatles circa Across The Universe.
Road To Somewhere makes a direct moment out of a light rhythm, Some People looks to fly on the wind and Eat Yourself is soulful without raising its voice. Happiness carries a little bit of Bolan boogie in its synth backpack and Caravan Girl is scarily close to straightforward guitar pop, like the Cranberries but better.
There is little of the tease and much less of the look-at-me manoeuvres found in Supernature, however. It may be another artful move, this time into sincerity, but you have to concede along the way that even if you see this as faux warmth (and I don't), it's clever and surprising. For proof of that you only have to hear Cologne Cerrone Houdini, which sits somewhere between a John Barry film score and the arrangements Jean-Claude Vannier devised for Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire De Melody Nelson. That is, sultry and lush but also verging on grand and almost mockingly dramatic. |
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