It is late in the evening and the whole family is in the living room eating dinner. A car commercial pops up on the TV showing a young woman cruising down a highway in a 2017 Toyota Prius.
Suddenly, a fun, catchy song starts to play in the background. The song has a deep, gritty electronic beat, pounding away like it is in sync with the engine of the car. Then, out comes the voice of the lead singer, Alison Goldfrapp, repeating “I can’t wait, I can’t wait anymore,” sounding far away and angelic.
Twenty seconds ago, nobody in the living room wanted a Prius, but now? Now they need one.
This advertisement has not been made yet (give it time, it probably will be), but that is most likely where a listener would stumble upon their first Goldfrapp song, with the words “save big with zero percent APR financing for 72 months” being spoken in the background.
Their electropop sound is very marketable, something that is easy for anybody to enjoy. Goldfrapp songs are like the cross section of a Madonna hit with something Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) would produce. Each track is a driving force, something to be reckoned with.
The band Goldfrapp, comprised of Alison Goldfrapp and producer Will Gregory, has been releasing music since early 1999. “Silver Eye” is the electronic duo’s seventh studio album and comes after a chain of releases that were drastically different from one another.
Their last album, “Tales of Us,” was folk-inspired, or “folktronica,” and was much more focused on her vocals than the production itself. “Silver Eye” marks the band’s return to their previous sound from the 2000s, when they released gems like “Ooh La La” and “Strict Machine.” The title of their new album is a reference to the moon, as Goldfrapp tries to include her connection to nature more and more in her work.
“The power of nature and the elemental has always been in our music,” she explained in an interview with The Guardian. “But as I get older, I feel the connection to it more. It’s mortality, maybe, but the state of the world too.”
The album’s opener “Anymore” is a smooth, steady track, with Alison’s vocals sounding very light and atmospheric. It has a very satisfying chord progression, tirelessly pushing forward without ever becoming too repetitive. What becomes repetitive are the lyrics. This and every other song on the track list seem determined to overstay their welcome toward the end.
“Systemagic” is a bright, fun song that sounds like it was ripped right out of the mid-‘90s. The vocals are overly manipulated, reminiscent of when the music industry discovered auto-tune and went absolutely nuts with it. Goldfrapp makes multiple references to the moon, the “Silver Eye,” and incorporates a lot of other pagan terminology.
Goldfrapp did hit it out of the park with “Faux Suede Driver.” The lyrics are almost incomprehensible, yet they are raw and full of emotion. The chorus does not contain any actual words, but is instead filled with reversed vocal samples and a haunting reverb. As the song progresses, a deep saw wave starts taking over, filling the track with loads of energy.
The rest of the tracks are not anything to write home about and a lot of them could have been cut in half. Goldfrapp’s biggest issue is that they play it too safe and are not experimenting in places where they should.
