Search - Goldfrapp :: Black Cherry/Felt Mountain

Felt it

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 10/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Faux-sexy pop tarts, eat your li'l hearts out. Alison Goldfrapp has a leg up on the world of sexy, sensuous pop music.



And with her third album "Supernature" awaiting release in the U.S., it's time to revisit her first two albums, "Felt Mountain" and "Black Cherry." While stylistically these two can be quite different, they share certain sounds: icy trippiness and soft sensuality.



"Felt Mountain" is a unique kind of electronica: velvety, weird, and incredibly sensuous. The wintry cover art brings to mind trees, snow and the aurora; the music inside more or less continues that theme, with chilly electronica blanketing piano melodies and funk-edged pop music.



"Are you human/or a dud?/Are you human/or do you make it up?" Goldfrapp croons in one of the sexier songs. Her vocals are in their best form here, able to murmur sexy lyrics ("I shiver when you shake/And fold into jelly...") then let rip with a throaty croon or a weird yowl.



Her follow-up, "Black Cherry," is a bit less of a thrill, merely because it's less unique. It seems like more typical trip-hop. But thankfully, the more you listen to it, the clearer it becomes that this chilly, sparkling piece of pop work. Think of "Felt Mountain," but make it icier and full of sweeping electronic sound effects, rather than soft downtempo.



With that in mind, "Black Cherry" is a genuinely lovely piece of work: It has swaying trip-hop songs, swooning balladry, blippy pop, and the twisty techno of "Strict Machine." Where Goldfrapp sounded sexy before, here she sounds like she's having a lot of fun. The only real flaw is "Twist," which sounds like Kylie trying out a more electronic sound.



While the two albums are very different, there are songs that link them together with similar styles -- the delicate "Forever" could easily have been from "Felt Mountain," while the dramatic "Human" could have been a cut from "Black Cherry." It's just that one veers more towards sultry downtempo, while the other is more openly sexy, cold and dancey.



While at first they sound incredibly different, "Black Cherry" and "Felt Mountain" share enough things to make them interlinked masterpieces. Sultry, sweet and uniformly pretty."