Goldfrapp Seventh Tree

Wow, they wrote a tune this time. I hear Erasure. And Yazoo. Still not as good as "Strict Machine" but a LOT better than "Ooh La La".

I'm tempted to get this just for the beautiful cover, but really after a dozen listens, I still don't hear anything interesting on this, esp. not 'A&E'.

"Clowns" is quite astonishing.

"Happiness" puts me in mind of The Singing Detective, for some reason. The lyrics are a bit grating, but the sound of the thing is pretty magic.

yeah that's one of the better tracks - get all sorts of images from it.

I'm halfway thrugh my first listen, and I've a feeling this will prove to be a grower. Psychedelia-tinged folkiness is not typically a direction I'd be thrilled with, but there's enough pop nous and nice production touches here to keep my interest. It seems to be their most consistently melodic album since Felt Mountain (not going all Gier on you, just saying, like).

yeah it's pretty nice, I like it much more than the last album; it definitely feels like a spiritual heir to Felt Mountain

It's Felt Mountain's much jollier and more outgoing younger sister.

Road to Somewhere's really good.

"Clowns" is my favorite track, but the mp3's I've heard make the vocals sound lo-fi (like poorly encoded), while the rest of the music is very lush.

I really don't hear the link with 'Felt Mountain', except that it's just slower than those last two robo-pop albums.

Swooning strings. Wistfullness. Granted it's more damp woodlands than alpine peaks.

The only track reminiscent of that Lynch meets James Bond thing they had is "Cologne Cerrone Houdini", which not surprisingly is my favorite thing on this.

good point spencer, that is very noticable on the first track, I think it's a rough mix or something

Oh, I just assumed it was meant to sound like that. Her vocals are quite often heavily treated on their other albums.

The snatches I've heard reminds me of Jane Siberry - vocally and instrumentally. The lyrics are probably as barking too...

I've been a bit put off by the sudden and alarming realisation that parts of it sound slightly like Katie Melua.

had only heard the h&la mix of 'a&e' and thought "that'll do" but i just got the original of it and from one play, well, that's nice ;_;. feel the need to check a full goldfrapp lp for prob the first time ever.

The last "full goldfrapp lp" was pretty much stupendous all the way through.

This album sounds like Joan Osborne and Superstition-era Siousie And The Banshees and Primitive Radio Gods and I ain't complaining.

I've got a feel I'd like this more than either of the last two. The robo-glam thing didn't really do it for me.

Me neither. For me Felt Mountain represented the kind of thing that Goldfrapp do best and I'm glad they've both returned to and advanced that template. The new one is largely tremendous.

this is probably my least favourite LP they've done but still liking it OK

Top three: Clowns, Road to Somewhere, Some People.

Picked it up for ten bucks yesterday on the back of the lavish praise being heaped all over it. I loved Felt Mountan and Black Cherry, but this is just ummmm....... well, if I want to hear Kate Bush, I'll listen to Kate Bush.

I got the album on Monday, it's taking me a while to get into it. "Happiness" and "A&E" are my favourite tracks at the moment. I'm hearing parallels with The Kinks' "...Are The Village Green Preservation Society" album, which I picked up at the same time.

Like Clowns. Is very Felt Mountain redux, the rest of it.

I think that FM is more "cold"/winter, while ST is more "warm"/summer/autumn, if that makes any sense.

I dug this out again today for no apparent reason other than I had Happiness stuck in my head.

It's funny, I utterly *HATED* this when it first came out, didn't give it more than a cursory listen before filing it and Goldfrapp under "meh lost it" (Thing is, I *liked* the robo-glam stuff I know that everyone else hated.)

But this album has its charms, though it took me a while to find them. It makes me feel a bit "Grown Up" to listen to it. But at my age, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe.

i thought the robo-glam stuff was what everyone loved? the black cherry stuff, though probably less so the next album, which was a bit of a retread.

k8, did you ever hear the beth gibbons & rustin man album, out of season? think you'd love it anyway, but especially if you like this.

No, I meant to buy that Beth Gibbons thing, but it came out when I was unemployed and I missed it (like a lot of stuff).

I always thought everyone hated the robo-glam stuff - I can remember my bandmate HATING on Strict Machine and the like when Black Cherry came out saying the album was no good.

This album has a lot of atmospherics that I missed the first time around. Perhaps it's a headphones album, really.

i picked the album up after all the fuss had died down, and fell for its subtle charms.
and despite the fact i loved the robo-glam stuff, i think i have listened to this album more.

i can imagine hating the robo-glam stuff if you had any real attachment to their debut, which was v pastoral and blissed-out - i liked it but had no investment in them staying the same, plus "strict machine" was just such a huge club jam at the time.

seriously, the more i think about it the more i think you'll adore the beth gibbons album, k8.

Perhaps it's a headphones album

It definately is, I can't imagine listening to it any other way. I bought this album when it first came out, played it quite a bit, but after a month or so filed it away. I have listened to it about as much as Black Cherry though.

I am realising, unfortunately, that I am getting too old for club jams and dance floors and the like. :-(

Black Cherry was just the ultimate SEXY SEXXXYYY SEEEEXXXXXX album as far as I'm concerned, it just oozes sexuality. Seventh Tree is so... almost prim.

I didn't think ST sounded like FM at all - and hey, Lex, how can you take the Quirkiness of FM? Or was that why you didn't have any attachment to it? This is much more heart-on-sleeve kind of stuff. It is almost 70s AOR at times, like the WUB has been burried, but although on first listen I thought the wub had gone, it is still there, underneath the texture as opposed to defining it.

is stuff like "utopia" really that Quirky though? there were some really great sounds and moods on felt machine, i thought, though yeah i only ever go back to "utopia" and "human" now.

alison goldfrapp's Quirkiness has never bothered me because, i think, she doesn't enunciate - she sort of mumbles, half to herself. it makes it less of a look-at-me pose. which isn't to say she hasn't annoyed me for other reasons at times - she's very good at nailing an aesthetic so well on one or two tracks that if she repeats it, it feels like a paler imitation of what she's already done.

seriously, the more i think about it the more i think you'll adore the beth gibbons album, k8.

lex is right.
the 'rustin man' album is very late night/mellow/autumnal and is pretty easy to find these days.
its often on the fopp cheap shelves.

I think there's a lot of that kind of deliberate off the wall fairytale quirkiness on FM, but somehow it's not as offensive as the quirk you hate, Lex.

I was thinking about this, trying to figure out exactly what distinguishes the good from the bad - I used to think that it was whether it seemed "natural" or "forced" - whether it's put on like a drama student pose or "just the way someone is". But that isn't it at all - because you take something like Fever Ray that is theatrical as all hell, but it's still wonderful.

Maybe it's what we were saying on twitter the other day about doors that stay closed. Someone said on another thread about Florence &TM, that there always seemed to be a moment where she took a bow at the end, with a girlish giggle, admitting it to be an act. What you thought to be doors are revealed to be painted scenery.

While with something like Felt Mountain, and with Fever Ray, there are doors that open immediately, revealing wonderful vistas, and doors that you have to hear the music several times to notice that they are even there. And some doors that never, ever open, no matter how many times you stand at them. That sense of genuine mystery, a kind of genuine otherworldliness that goes beyond the school of Quirk "ooh, look at me, I'm so out there." The latter is like an affectation that screams OOH LOOK AT THIS WEIRD THING while the former is a weird thing sitting in the corner of the room like it's almost just been discarded there, and it's not explained, and *certainly* not drawn attention to, it's just this inexplicable thing, but without which the room would not be complete.

Nope, sorry, listened to a couple of Beth Gibbons/Rustin Man tracks and it was just... no. Too too smokey jazz cafe cigarettes black turtlenecks berets jaaazzzzzz no no no. Not feeling it.

There's just something so... lounge singer about it, and I really can't stand that.

so .. lounge singer

on mogadon perhaps.

fair enough. it does take a certain mood.

I've never really wanted to go back to this album, a lot of it feels a bit clunky, but Clowns is incredible and by some distance the best thing she's ever done. Then again I hated the electro-robo-glam Goldfrapp.

I'm playing catch-up at the moment and have moved onto Portishead's Third now. Ha ha, see if you can spot the pattern.

I've no fetish for the jazz trappings that your picking up on that Beth Gibbons record either really, Kate. The quality of her voice though, is just so sad and mournful that it transcends that lounge thing for me. Or rather, it drops through the bottom of the genre into this whole other void.

"Songs that go CLUNNNNGGGGE bip."

There's something about that mournful, wavering quality to Gibbon's voice that has always bothered me. There's something that sounds so weak and clinging (in personality not in sound) about it that I just can't relate.

It's funny, because even though Goldfrapp often works the same kind of territory (that fragile little girl whispiness) there's a fundamental strength and vibrancy to her voice that makes her work more rich and appealing to me.

But this may entirely be projection based on image, I admit. Goldfrapp's voice seems like it would sink a bolt of brandy and pick itself up and go on, while Gibbons' voice, you kind of just want to give it a slap and tell it to snap out of it.

(But I admit this may be related to the depression I've just had to claw myself out of as much as the music itself.)

completely indifferent to this album - robo stuff was OK but nothing beats the lonely spy vibe of Felt Mountain

Goldfrapp's voice seems like it would sink a bolt of brandy and pick itself up and go on, while Gibbons' voice, you kind of just want to give it a slap and tell it to snap out of it.

Hmm, I know what you're saying, and I partly agree, but I have a totally opposite emotional response to it. Goldfrapp sounds like she's just playing with each genre and it's kind of fun to pick apart the influences etc, but that's as involved as I get. Gibbons does what she does cos she's got no fucking choice and that really resonates with me.

I can hear my mother's therapist echoing in my ear "You have a choice. You always have a choice." I'm just sick of the sound of weeping women, you know?

Anyway, it's ALL ABOUT the moment in Little Bird about 2.40 where the looping melotron goes all psychedelic and the drums kick in with the bassline and she starts singing JULY LIE LIE LIEE LAAA LAAAA LAA and extemporising the riff and I get shivers down my spine and want to throw my head back and dance about a maypole or something.

It's like they took one of those fake Chemical Bros Beatles riffs and turned it inside out and made it amazing.

(And it's funny, I've spent so much time listening to the BTWS remix of Happiness that it's weird to hear the original and realise that it's not actually about happiness at all, really - it's about being sucked into a Cult!)

Clowns is the only song from this that I ever feel compelled to listen to.

I kind of agree with this: "it makes me feel a bit "Grown Up" to listen to it". There would have been a time when I'd have been unable to listen to it. It sounded nice this morning, accompanying the walk up the lane to the bus stop ...

The song that sounds most like Felt Mountain here is "Cologne Cerrone Houdini" and it is spectacular. I'm surprised it doesn't get more mentions.

Completely agree that it's a "grown up" album, but it's aged remarkably well.

Was revisiting because of this: http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/before_goldfrapp_before_kate_bush_there_was_noosha_fox