Good As Goldfrapp

Speaking to Alison Goldfrapp in the lobby of a faceless English midlands hotel, a few things are immediately clear. Firstly, her ice queen reputation is thoroughly undeserved: this morning she is chatty, gracious and very, very chilled out. Secondly, no subject is off limits – not even her sexuality which, very belatedly, became a subject of public discourse in February when she announced she was in a lesbian relationship with script-writer Lisa Gunning. How did it feel to be thrust into the public spotlight in so drastic a fashion? She smiles.

“I’ve never been talked about in any context other than music, so that was kind of new,” she says “But, you know, it hasn’t been a huge thing. It’s not as if I open my door and there are paparazzi everywhere.”
The actual ‘outing’, as it were, occurred in the pages of a Murdoch rag. Discussing her new album, Head First, Goldfrapp let slip she and Gunning were an item.
“I don’t know why people would find it surprising,” Goldfrapp said at the time. “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. I don’t like to be pigeonholed in my life or my music either. The best policy seems to be to go with what feels right, so I do.”
Forgive us playing amateur psychologist but it’s tempting to conclude that Goldfrapp’s new-found romantic bliss has seeped into her music. Where once was all whip-cracking ‘ooh, lah lahs’ and Wicker Man mysticism, Head First is nothing more or less than a straightforwardly fantastic pop record (albeit one with lashings of innuendo-soaked lyrics: “I got a rocket/you’re going on it”).
“Well, you are reacting to what went before aren’t you?” she proffers. “Our last album was very quiet and pastoral and, after that, you want to throw back the curtains and do something different. The point is, when you go into the studio you never know exactly what you are going to create. It’s not planned to that extent.”
Shortly before Goldfrapp and musical partner Will Gregory (surprise surprise, the duo chose to call themselves ‘Goldfrapp’ rather than ‘Gregory’) went into the studio, they had flown to Los Angeles to work with Christina Aguilera. This is a somewhat sensitive subject – they found Aguilera thoroughly likable and speak fondly of their time in LA. But the song they recorded with her appeared to vanish down a plug-hole, being conspicuously absent from the singer’s recent Bionic record.
“Christina Aguilera was terribly sweet,” Goldfrapp said earlier this year. “She wasn’t guarded at all. Very relaxed. We have met a few lady pop stars and, you know, they can be quite guarded in the way they present themselves.”
Still, she insists that Head First’s overt pop flavourings owed nothing to her and Gregory’s dalliances with ‘X-tina’ and, instead, sprang from some deep-seated hunger to overhaul their songbook. On the road since September, she’s been enjoying reproducing the songs, which are tremendously perky and thoroughly lacking in the S&M overtones of old Goldfrapp staples such as ‘Strict Machine’ and ‘Black Cherry’. As ever, Alison is touring sans Gregory, who prefers to leave the messy business of live performance to his partner.
“Will basically stays at home. It’s been that way for a while now,” she says. “It works well for both of us. He’s got a family, so he’s happier for me to just go out on the road and look after that side of things. It’s probably good we’re not spending 24 hours in one another’s company. When you’re writing an album together, that’s quite an intense time. Going out on the road with that person as well… it can be quite full on really. In a way I think that our relationship is still very fresh when we go into the studio again together, which is kind of nice.”
Though in many ways atypical of the duo, Head First may well turn out to be Goldfrapp’s most successful record yet. The irony is not lost on Alison, who had to endure the ignominy of being snubbed by the UK’s influential BBC Radio One, which declined to playlist ‘Rocket’ over the spring. Instead, it was relegated to the sweater-wearing Siberia of BBC2.
“Radio Two have got a much bigger listenership,” Alison says. “They play a lot more varied music. I don’t really know why the Radio 1 thing happened. They just decided it wasn’t their kind of thing. Which is fair enough really. It’s not something I really worry about.”
She’s not too bothered, you sense. And with good reason. The BBC may no longer have a crush on them but Alison and Gregory remain the toast of the fashion industry. At New York fashion week, their music was all over the catwalks whilst the pagan princess chic Goldfrapp modelled circa 2005 remains enormously influential (Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan and Florence Welch of Florence And The Machine appear to have based their whole look on it). Not one for idling on her laurels, Goldfrapp is swimming in even deeper, stranger sartorial waters on the current tour, for which she is modeling a dress fashioned out of – you beta believe it! – old video tape.
“I saw some video game hanging from a tree once. Well, I saw something hanging from a tree. It was glistening in the sunshine. I thought, ‘wow that looks really lovely, I wonder what that is.’ I walked up to the tree and... and it was video tape. I though, oh okay. I want to do something with that. So I got a dress made in it.”