Head First

 

 

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When Goldfrapp release a new album, you never know what you will find in the box.
Is it the dreamy, quirky Goldfrapp of Felt Mountain? The glam of Supernature? Or even the folky, acoustic feel of their most recent record, Seventh Tree?
"Head First", Goldfrapp's fifth album, sees the virtuosic British duo (that electro-pop siren Alison Goldfrapp and her wizard sidekick Will Gregory) embrace 80s blockbusters (Top Gun, Flashdance), and euphoric synth-bombast (Abba, ELO, The Pointer Sisters), to buoyant - if not mindblowing - effect.
Will and Alison once again reinvent themselves, and head back towards the disco.
The CD comprises nine brisk tracks and clocks in at under 40 minutes, so there's hardly a wasted second.
There is not a sigle dud, all songs snappily titled, five with just single words.
This is upbeat, unashamedly pop album.
There's "Rocket" with its witty guide to how to end a relationship ("I've gotta rocket/You're going on it/You're never coming back"). "I Wanna Life", which quotes Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams, is unashamedly camp and sounds like the early '80s hit "Gloria" by Laura Brannigan and the frankly implausible notion of Goldfrapp finding herself too tubby for her jeans on "Alive".
The beautiful "Believer", with its stadium-sized chorus,reminds of Fleetwood Mac.
"Voicething" tones down the disco and is floaty and atmospheric while "Hunt" is dark and dramatic.
Apart from the dance pulse, there is a subtler side to Goldfrapp, and happily that is also here, as a title like "Dreaming" might lead you to suspect.
There's not much room for the experimental Goldfrapp of old here, although the abstract album closer "Voicething' with its sampled, cut up vocals and no actual lyrics could almost have found a home on "Felt Mountain".
"The breathy technology of Voicething is more captivating than a Laurie Anderson tribute but something of a musical non-sequitur".- Colin Somerville.
All in all, the album is first and foremost about all-out electropop, all done in the best possible taste.
No duds here, but not a truly killer song either.
Amazing.
Seventh Tree

Ok. So it isn't Revolver, or even an Ok Computer; but Head First is a very lovely and light pop record from two artists that owe much of their success to all those early electronic bands that found their way to the radio airwaves in the 80's. The synthesizer is front and center here. Imagine throwing a little Howard Jones, Eurythmics, early Depeche Mode, Abba and a dash of Van Halen and you have the sound of Head First.

Does that mean that this isn't a Goldfrapp record? No, it's still all the Goldfrapp we know and love, just bathed in the kind of sound that encourages leg warmers, neon colours and unitards. Don't come into it looking for the sexy club sounds of Black Cherry or Supernature, nor the moody and atmospheric stuff of Felt Mountain or Seventh Tree. Instead, jump in to have a little fun, get nostalgic about the decade that made the synthesizer part of our common vocabulary and maybe get a little Xanadu with it :-)

I love it. But then again, for me, Will and Allison can't do no wrong.

I've given up on trying to figure out what signature sound Goldfrapp is going to embrace next -- they've gone for quirky electronica, robotic club dance, and delicate airy pop. So what do they do in "Head First"? Well, they've drifted back into dance territory, except that this brand of electronica is saturated in retro beats and swooshes.

The sound of a blast-off heralds "Rocket," a bouncy synthpop tune full of random tinkles and squidgy keyboard melodies. "Ooh oh oh, I got a rocket/oh oh oh, you're going on it/oh oh oh, you're never comin' back!" Goldfrapp sings gleefully in the middle of the song.

Things get a bit more downtempo in "Believer," in which the melody flows swiftly around the stacatto beats. And after that, we get a steady stream of bouncy, colorful synthpop that reeks of the 80s -- the icy vocal core of "Alive's" flittery pop anthem, the hard dancy flavor of "Dreaming," the delicate nighttime prettiness of the titular track.

The one thing I really, REALLY couldn't stomach: "I Wanna Life," a perky pop song that sounds like it was cribbed from a bad eighties musical. But there are also some interesting inclusions that are hard to classify -- they introduce a twisting electronic soundscapes of "Hunt," where Alison's vocals play second fiddle to the music. And the final song "Voicething" lives up to its title, dispensing with typical vocals, and instead embracing a ghostly eerie exploration of sound.

"Head First" is definitely not Goldfrapp's best work -- it's fluffy, radio-friendly pop music that only occasionally takes a twist into the unknown. In fact, it's kind of weird to have a band that has done so much cutting-edge music go back to eighties synthpop -- it's completely soaked in that 80s vibe (much like M83's "Saturdays = Youth"), and it left me wondering, "... is that it? They don't have anything new here? It's so... predictable."

For the record: the music is not bad, just predictable and relatively lightweight (compared to the brilliant "Black Cherry," "Felt Mountain" or "Seventh Tree"). Heated dance beats, shimmering layers, and undulating swathes of synth that buzzes, tinkles and whooshes like a spacebound rocket. And they dabble in some darker, more experimental songs in the second half, especially in "Voicething" -- it's a musical synth journey that drifts from one plateau to the next.

Alison Goldfrapp's beautifully chilly voice adds a distinctive sound to the album -- and she does some wonderfully weird stuff, like an entire song filled with inarticulate noises. No words at all. And the lyrics are sometimes even more vivid than the music: "Look at the trees in the dark/bending like a bony finger/Cry for the face on a little moon by the tree..."

"Head First" is a sleek, warm synthpop album that reeks of nostalgia, but that nostalgia also bogs it down -- it lacks the magical brilliance of Goldfrapp's prior works.

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3.0 out of 5 stars New Direction
I've been listening to Goldfrapp for some time now, and have noticed that the band is hardly a stranger to changing genre from album to album. Read more

Published on April 15 2010 by Alexander Michaels

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