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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Shiny and warm, March 23, 2010
This review is from: Head First (Audio CD)
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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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you like Supernature, definitely give it a listen!, April 16, 2010
This review is from: Head First (Audio CD)
I bought this album last week immediately upon seeing it on Amazon; read no reviews, comments, etc... I'm Goldfrapp fan and it was a new album, click-buy - simple as that. And I'm so glad I did; I love it!
As with many reviews here (I have read a few now out of curiosity) the first thing that jumped out was how much of an "80s" sound it has, which is OK with me. Still modern electro but with a blatant throwback to some 80's pop. I've always been more into Black Cherry and Supernature than Felt Mountain and Seventh Tree (what a surprise with that one..), so the sound of this album was definitely more of what I hoping for. Yeah, it's a little pop'y, but not terribly. The darker tracks "Dreaming" and "Hunt" are fantastic though...
Bottom line, it was absolutely worth buying and I would do it again without a blink!
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
too much candy, April 9, 2010
This review is from: Head First (Audio CD)
Goldfrapp have always been derivative, their specialty "retro" -- albeit a look back at a different era or medium with each new incarnation. But no matter how you classify their shtick, there is no doubt that they have always done it superbly.
And no doubt their new effort, Head First, will find a large audience, new or old, that will find it just as superb. It isn't, however.
Their first album, Felt Mountain, was their absolute masterpiece, never to be equaled in terms of craftsmanship, elegance, and overwhelming melancholia. It was a nod to an old, bygone Europe, and one could practically picture Alison Goldfrapp as a happy, blond German Heidi of the hills, who is full of wretched abnegation and sexual frustration on the inside -- a perfect symbol of a dying continent between the wars. Where others have tried to convey that image by referring to Berlin's dens of iniquity, Godlfrapp were much more sophisticated: there was a brass-heavy polka, there were snippets of Jacques Brel, bits from different moments of history. The impression was even stronger in concert, where the atmosphere was largely produced by a violinist in lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat. Ironically, the album became a cult favorite but did not sell all that well.
The follow-up, Black Cherry, caught everyone by surprise: although it still carried several lovely ballads that seemed to come from Felt Mountain, it was primarily a dance effort that harkened to the early seventies and channeled Norman Greenbaum, of all people, along with primitive synthesizer sounds. It sold extremely well, and was a dollar sign that the band could not ignore. Sure enough, their next effort, Supernature, was an all-out glam disco concoction, meticulous in its detail to the genre's conventions and to Alison's disco-diva costumes. It was also just like old disco albums in one other respect: it was actually a bad album from a purely creative viewpoint, but it was immensely enjoyable. It sold in the millions, spawned three single hits, and packed the concert venues across the world.
Seventh Tree was a surprise again, a delightful one. It was a collection of unpretentious and very well written songs that used an overarching acoustic approach, almost folky in places, as if the band (Alison and her synthesizer man, Will Gregory) wanted to assert that simplistic disco aside, they could still produce something memorable and worthy of attention. Not only was the album good musicianship, it allowed Alison to step down from the exhausting podium of disco glamour and be a much simpler character.
In all cases, Goldfrapp had successfully reinvented themselves. With Head First, they take a "retro" look to their own past -- already? Head First is another dance album, harkening back to Supernature, only this time without the mature, sensual diva; instead, we have cheerleader pop. While it should be the privilege of any artist to present his or her work to the world forever, it's a bit cringeworthy when a forty-four year old (per Wikipedia) avatar of Donna Summer or Gloria Gaynor decides to be a teenager.
Head First is not exactly bad, it's just wholly insipid. Compositionally and lyrically, it has no discernible merit. Even the enjoyment that Supernature provided is much less here. The album seems hurried, as if for some reason they had to produce a hit single really fast, then threw in all manner of filler and called it an album. The first song, Rocket, is already a major single climbing the charts, and with its infectious chorus, it's no wonder. Soon thereafter, though, the music becomes wallpaper and it's hard to focus on it -- there's nothing there, just cutesy noise, the kind that makes you get off of the sofa and feel an urgency to fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen while listening. It just isn't riveting on its own. A description of each song following Rocket would be superfluous, they are all pretty much the same. There is a sneaking dark impression that if this music followed its logical path, it would land squarely in Lady Gaga's territory, minus the vulgarity. The closer, Voicething, is exactly that: a series of processed vocalizations and isolated sounds made with the voice against the usual synth backdrop, not nearly as experimental as it sounds in this description, and absolutely unmemorable. The fact that the album is mercifully short (under 40 minutes) and ends with this non-song, reinforces the feeling that it was patched together really fast for no particular reason. Oh, and you don't really need to know about the lyrics, do you? With poetic jewels such as "A Cupid on the go, no arrow and no bow, yeah yeah yeah" and "I wanna life, I want it now forever, I wanna life, I wanna know, I wanna life, I wanna be together, I wanna life, I wanna know" -- surely you don't want to tire your mind with such heavy thoughts.
Considering how talented the duo is, I am happy to wait for their next effort. Until then, I can always listen to Felt Mountain.
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