Music
22 Apr 04

All That Glistens is Not Goldfrapp

The austere, baroque qualities of Goldfrapp’s music may lend themselves to those notions of arty elitism often associated with the band. Both Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp approach their craft with such Zen-like precision and deliberation, that it’s difficult not to think of them as being anything other than studiously cool, world-weary electro merchants. Goldfrapp, however, has other ideas, and she lets me know as much by quizzically raising an eyebrow behind oversized Chanel shades.

“I don’t think you can do pop music if you’re going to be elitist,” she chides. “People like to create the idea that we’ve no humour and that we sit around looking bored and stuff, but I don’t care…people have an idea of what you are that might not be right.”
In much the same way that Goldfrapp’s music is a mosaic of soundscapes, influences and narratives, Alison herself is a mass of not entirely welcome contradictions, simultaneously exuding a jolly-hockey-sticks Englishness and an edgier, more drole Cool Britannia vibe. She is healthily precious about her work, yet shrugs off the notion of ‘selling out’ (“‘Strict Machine’ was Number One in the ringtones chart when it came out,” she informs me proudly). While the band survives comfortably in both populist and puritanical musical circles, Goldfrapp herself is both approachable and candid, though still displaying a strain of carefully contrived ennui. This latter affectation may or may not have to do with last night’s Belfast show, their first of eleven dates on Duran Duran’s European tour.
“The sound was shit in Belfast last night, and the roadies were up till three packing away the gear,” she notes. “So they’ll be arriving late today so we probably won’t get to soundcheck. Normally the first couple of dates are pretty ropey anyway, but we’ll have another nine dates to go to get ourselves together.”
How did such an unlikely touring pair come about?
“I thought it would be quite a laugh for us to do it… y’know it’s an experience, playing these huge stadiums, touting our single about the place…,” she laughs.
Was she ever a Durannie in her youth?
“I was never really a fan of theirs,” she concedes. “They were always a bit too uncool, a bit goody two shoes. But they’re really fantastic guys, and Simon Le Bon is a bit of a fan.”
Goldfrapp are set to spend the summer performing at many of Europe’s festivals. This particular scribe has a hard time seeing Alison slumming it at Glastonbury with the jester-hatted hoi-polloi. Surely the Goldfrapp live experience is best suited to crimson, crush-velvet interiors, clandestine lighting, non-warm beer?
Alison eyeballs me.
“Actually, they’re my favourite thing to do,” she counters. “You don’t soundcheck, you don’t think about it, you just get on in there, the audience is having a good time, it’s much more relaxed than doing your own show. You hang out with your mates, drink, the weather’s nice, it’ll be fun… we’ll write the next album during the week and then pop off to do a festival in the weekend.”
The visual extension of Goldfrapp’s music, be it video, album artwork, or press shots where Alison is playing piano in her knickers, tends to be as artful and adroit as the music itself, thus giving the band’s persona a more celestial or astral quality than that of many of their pop or electronic peers.
What’s the creative process for something like video production?
“I have an idea, I give it to a director, and it gets elaborated on,” she says. “With ‘Strict Machine’, the director took the album, brought the ideas together, but essentially it’s still my vision we’re working with.”
It’s not all creative fun and frolics, however.
“Videos are such a fucking nightmare. I absolutely hate making them,” she cringes. “‘Strict Machine’ was odd, it was mainly done on blue-screen, and I spent the first half hour of every day crying. Just standing there on my own. I look at it now and I go “nnnnhhhhh”…”