Thursday, February 9, 2012
Well, more than a month has gone by, so I might as well pop in here for another long-overdue post. First, an update on the situation here…this blog certainly isn’t being shuttered, I just don’t have the time to fully devote to it anymore. Things have gotten so busy for me with the writing that the only way I can maintain my sanity is to work from 8:30 to 5 and just shut ’er down right there. My bad old habit of continuing work into the night nearly killed me in December, so that’s something I had to curtail. Still, that didn’t keep my January from being even more ridiculous than December was…at one point I was juggling about ten different band interviews, and factor in my daily blogging at MSN and reviews & features at Decibel and Terrorizer, blogging late at night was not a big priority. But I’ll pop in here whenever I can. Like now.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of my first taking a serious stab at this music writing thing, and it’s crazy how far I’ve come, how many reviews and articles I’ve written. Something I should have gotten into in 1991 instead of 2001, mind, but I’ve always been a late bloomer. But as a friend told me when I mentioned this silly anniversary, she said, “The anniversary of an achievement is more meaningful than a trivial one like getting married or being born.” What an awesome thing to say. And how true. On February 22nd I just might take a look at the first review I ever wrote for PopMatters – Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World, and I’ll probably cringe many times.
Anyway, this all coincides nicely with what I wanted to write about here. Just the other day Goldfrapp released their singles retrospective, which, being a total fanboy, I had to buy, part to be a completist and partially for the two new tracks on the CD, and I was reminded again how much they dominated my last eleven years. When I think about the best “singles bands” of the 2000s – you know, the bands who amassed the most impressive collection of singles – two bands immediately spring to mind: Doves, and Goldfrapp. Doves already put out their own career retrospective a couple years ago, which I’ve already raved about, and while Goldfrapp’s collection isn’t as thorough and could very well have spanned a pair of CDs, it’s every bit as formidable.
Goldfrapp’s career arc is such a fascinating one…or at least to yours truly. Like many other people, my first exposure to the astounding voice of Alison Goldfrapp was on the song "Pumpkin" off Tricky’s classic Maxinquaye album in 1995, but it wasn’t until 2000 that her own collaboration with producer Will Gregory came out. I had a friendly correspondence with a singer from an indie band at the time, we’d swap music recommendations and she’d tell me about her friends in music circles (“Oh, I just visited Elliott [Smith], I’m a little worried,” she’d say). In early 2001, one of the albums she was freaking out over was Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain…I’d seen it in the 2001 Pazz & Jop poll, so I was aware of the name, but didn’t know what to expect, but I took her word for it and went out and bought the CD. I was stunned when I heard it, it was so beautiful, entrancing, and above all else, enigmatic. There was a chilliness and weirdness in Alison’s singing that I just loved, as she spouted weird poetry about horses and lovely heads, like John Barry soundtracking a Godard film instead of a James Bond flick. The song that got me was “Utopia”, a strangely impenetrable tune about love and memory and fascism and genetic engineering, and I remember seeing Alison on Conan O'Brien appearing decidedly stiff, fussing with her in-ear monitor. That detachment was what I totally expected seeing her and her band play for the first time, which I dug, and I fully expected Goldfrapp to continue to sound just as quirky on their next album.
In 2003 I was firmly ensconced at PopMatters, having a total blast writing about indie, metal, electronic, alt-country, classic rock, anything. I had good knowledge of most genres, and so enjoyed tackling different bands every day. I got the assignment for Goldfrapp’s follow-up to Felt Mountain, and when I heard Black Cherry I all but fell off my chair. Here was this strange, demure, icy singer, transformed into a sultry, seductive, aggressive persona, singing atop these incredible arrangements that sounded so blatantly derived from the German “schaffel” trend that was happening at the time, which itself based its sound around the classic glam rock of the early-1970s. "Train", "Twist", and breakthrough single "Strict Machine" burst with such energy, and deeper cuts like the title track and "Slippage" hinted at something a whole lot darker and mysterious. Then there was the b-side I loved, a steely, Kraut-style cover of Italo-disco classic "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" that fit so well with the overall aesthetic and image Alison had taken on for that album. I listened to Black Cherry so much that year, probably more than any other in 2003, yet was still reluctant to rank it higher than 13 in my year-end list, which was an egregious mistake. Should have been top five.
2005’s Supernature was an interesting situation. By then I was dying to not only hear the new record but own it, but the problem was Goldfrapp no longer had a North American distribution deal for some reason. So I hit up CD Wow (remember that awesome site?) and got a proper UK copy that August instead of waiting a ridiculous seven months for the album to come out here. And though I loved it, it was the first time Goldfrapp sounded predictable, mining the same styles and influences that dominated Black Cherry. Still, what singles: "Ooh La La", "Number One", "Ride a White Horse", "Fly Me Away". That one only made 18 on my 2005 list, but with the clarity of hindsight Supernature holds up extremely well, and can be seen more as a companion piece to Black Cherry.
Funny story about Goldfrapp’s next album, 2008’s Seventh Tree, I wrote the review of that one on the plane to Frankfurt that February (I was on the way to Oslo), scrawled longhand in my notebook in an attempt to kill time on the nine-hour flight. I should’ve known better…I’m such a slow typist that it would have taken me far less time writing a review off the top of my head than copying it from my notes. Needless to say I never did that again. That was an interesting album, a stark departure from the high gloss of the previous two, going for something more pastoral, more (gulp) adult contemporary. But it was done in such a classy, beautiful way that it felt like the most logical next step for Goldfrapp and Gregory. Alison’s singing had always resembled Kate Bush, and here the influence was most noticeable, cooing here always-surreal lyrics atop an arrangement that was half-synthetic, half organic. What a languorous album that is, definitely the most sonically rich and the duo’s most front-to-back consistent work since Felt Mountain, highlighted by the gorgeous "A&E", one of their very finest singles, and one of the songs whose lyrics were the most direct, but poetically so (“I'm in a backless dress on a pastel ward that's shining / Think I want you still but it may be pills at work / Do you really wanna know how I was dancing on the floor? / I was trying to phone you when I'm crawling out the door”). Critics, including myself, were over the moon, and the album did extremely well in the UK, but unfortunately not as well in North America, peaking at 28 here, 48 in the States.
2010’s Head First was a funny one. Not many people “got” its blatant homages to Giorgio Moroder and Xanadu-era Olivia Newton-John, so the synth pop charm of "Rocket" and "Believer" were lost on a lot of people. Personally I understood it intentional triteness, and the album nailed that vibe very well, but it just wasn’t on par with Goldfrapp’s past work. It was a bit of a sales dud, too; after debuting at 6 in the UK it fizzled in the weeks and months that followed. People just weren’t into a musical homage this sincere and thorough. Aside from “Rocket” and the hilarious black metal-trolling video for “Alive”, my one big memory of Goldfrapp in 2010 was hearing them a lot where I went in the UK. I thought it was great to be in a country that played Goldfrapp songs on a radio channel as middle of the road as BBC Radio Two. I’d be in an inn having one of my many glorious full English breakfasts of that trip, and there’d be “A&E” playing in the background. I was happy. It sure beat hearing the mainstream Canadian pop we have to hear in this country.
Looking at my copy of The Singles, I’m amazed at all the great stuff that’s been left off: Human", “Twist”, “Fly Me Away”, Caravan Girl", “Alive”, not to mention such wonderful b-sides as “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” and the inspired half-original, half-cover "UK Girls (Physical)". But the airy, atmospheric new tracks "Yellow Halo" and "Melancholy Sky" do fit very well on this compilation. Overall, by being trimmed down to a good 54 minutes The Singles, while not definitive, is nevertheless a phenomenal collection of singles. Usually “best-of” collections signify either the end of a chapter or the end of the road for a band, but Goldfrapp are apparently at work on a sixth album, and I look forward to being surprised yet again by the direction Alison and Will head in next. Either way, I’ll probably love it. This stuff just clicks. Along with Doves, Drive-By Truckers, Meshuggah, Opeth, Goldfrapp was the soundtrack of a very big 10-11 years for me, and that’ll stick with me forever.
