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Album Review
by SashaS
28-4-2003
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| Goldfrapp have morphoed into sexy beast |
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Goldfrapp: 'Black Cherry'
(Mute)
Goldfrapp favours x-rated sounds
Whatever has happened on the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ since the debut album, ‘Felt Mountain’, Goldfrapp appears to have transformed from a Mary Poppins character into a soloist in ‘Showgirls’! No, we ain’t complaining, we applaud vamp-ism because the world would otherwise be a poorer place for the oglers. From a cutsie, quirky women who could have been a teacher (or Dido’s sister), she’s turned into this frau-fatale captivates bros and annoys sistahs… Glam, sexy, crazed babe!
Are we watching ‘Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde’, or is there something less sinister on offer? Perhaps Alison Goldfrapp has become confident enough to let the haughty, naughty, predator-femme to emerge… Whatever, this is a rodeo for the post-modern rockists, a total antidote to another retro-kitsch of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind. Ms Goldfrapp knows that sex is exploitative, so – she sexploites it!
The brill thingy is that the two principal members have quality musical ideas to use the image rather than to rely upon it. The ‘catwalk’ gets turned on with luschiously discoid ‘Crystalline Green’ and during the course Alison peels off layers of emotional make-up to leave us with a ‘Lolita’ like vision, a mixture of innocense and sin. ‘Train’ gets the juices going although it might share a note or few with a certain David Bowie track.
The partner-in-music, Will Gregory still keeps his favourite influences in, such as French soundtrack music of the 1960s, orchestral swoops (title track) that are balanced with pre-climatic pace, harmonies and vocalising to get your genitals in a twist (‘Twist’)… Ultra-funky ‘Tiptoe’ makes me fingers dance on the keys, there is a pensive, airy, ‘Hairy Trees’ (a bridge-tte to the debut disc); disco-vibe continues on ‘Strict Machine’, for ‘Slippage’ to present a very complex arrangement that goes off like a cyber-cabaret staged at the theatre at the end of time.
This Goldfrapp side is a revelation, this Goldfrapp disc is a colossal handbook that should top the sheets… It certainly can emo retune you and rev-up! This album has made me realise that the way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach but via his hormones. Music is all about meeting, mating and (romantic) malady.
‘Black Cherry’ sounds like a huge seduction; how can you not be happy?
8.6/10
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Tour dates:
18 May – Academy 2, Birmingham
19 May – Astoria, London
22 May – Pyramid, Portsmouth
23 May – Colston Hall, Bristol
25 May – Academy, Manchester
26 May – Metropolitan Uni, Leeds
28 May – QMU, Glasgow
SashaS
23-5-2005
Goldfrapp’s album ‘Black Cherry’ is released 28 April 2003 by Mute
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