The countdown to Goldfrapp’s fifth album has been overshadowed by the singer’s ‘outing’ – if that is the correct word to use in 2010– as a sometime lesbian. “I don’t know why people would find it surprising,” said Alison (who records as “Goldfrapp” with badger-like composer Will Gregory) after photos of her strolling hand in hand with film editor Lisa Gunning appeared in the British press. “Everything we’ve ever done — the music, the looks, the shows — has all been quite ambiguous and undefinable, and that’s how I am. I don’t like to be defined by my sexuality, which swings wherever I like to swing. I’ve had lovely, long relationships with men as well. I just happen to be in a relationship with a lady at the moment.”
It’s a bit of a leap to suggest that the warmer, cuddlier Goldfrapp we encounter on Head First owes something to Alison’s exiting of the closet. Nonetheless, she and Gregory have seldom sounded so chilled in their skins. Gone is the whip-snapping perve-pop of 2005’s Supernature, along with the Wickerman acoustica of 2007’s Seventh Tree. Replacing both is a balmy euro ‘tronica, all a glimmer with shiny melodies and candy-cane hooks. Listening to the big silly grin of a pop song that is their comeback single ‘Rocket’, you can’t help but conclude that, having spent the past decade flitting between personas and pouting like runway models, Goldfrapp are for the first time showing flashes of something like their real selves.
Of course, contented souls too often make for dreary musicians. Thankfully, Goldfrapp have retained their pop chops: the wispy ‘Believer‘ has Alison doing her finest ethereal girl impersonation as Gregory and producer Richard X conjure sleek keyboard lines, with results that sound like something out of a fantasy Eurovision where you don’t want to the start ripping up the seats seconds after the curtain comes up. Throughout the rest of the album, a distinct whiff of Reagan-era power-pop holds sway: the almost sinfully perky ‘Alive’ could be something the Pet Shop Boys bashed for one of their gay icon muses circa 1987, with some storming Kraftwerk synths thrown in at the end (“I’m feeling alive again,” she warbles – the clearest articulation of the LP’s overarching air of joie de vivre). Meanwhile, ‘Dreaming’ marries Moroder and Hot Chip and the slow-born title track shows that, contrary to earlier evidence, Goldfrapp can actually do slowcore balladry without sinking into a druggy fug.
Some of the advance murmuring had it that Goldfrapp were poised to – ugh – “do a Little Boots” and go on an ‘80s retro foray. That’s true as far as it goes but it is the ‘80s of John Hughes movies and ‘99 Red Balloons’ they are interested in excavating, rather than some Numanoid retro-future rendered in dry ice and bacofoil. Here’s one nostalgia trip you’ll be happy to see through all the way to the finish.