Goldfrapp - Silver Eye

Pitchfork 74

It takes Alison Goldfrapp more than a full verse into Silver Eye’s leadoff track “Anymore” before she utters a single word with more than one syllable: “You’re what I want. You’re what I need. Give me your love. Make me a freak.” Reductive? Considering her and collaborator Will Gregory—whose past lyrics would gussy up their earthy emotions and desires in hazy surrealism like, “Wolf lady sucks my brain” and, “Now take me dancing at the disco where you buy your Winnebago”—you might be tempted to think so. Prior to “Anymore,” Goldfrapp hid their most verbally explicit expression of lust (“Put your dirty angel face between my legs and knicker lace”) in an elaborate fantasy about a tryst with a traveling carny titled, appropriately enough, “Twist.”

But the direct approach suits this new album, the group’s first since 2013’s Tales of Us. Ever since the pair swapped the John Barry ambience of their debut album Felt Mountain for the electro-glam of its successor Black Cherry, they’ve staked their identity on being able to assume new identities at will. Wanna double down on that sexy “Spirit in the Sky” shimmer? There’s Supernature. Wanna go pastoral? Check out Seventh Tree. Wanna trade Gary Numan and Marc Bolan for the Pointer Sisters and circa-“Jump” Van Halen? Head for Head First. By contrast, Silver Eye is a synthesis—a combination of all the things the group has done well. “Become the one you know you are,” commands a key track, and they’re teaching by example. Who needs many syllables to express something so fundamental?

Glimpses of past glories are more evident in some songs than others. “Anymore” and its immediate follow-up “Systemagic” return to the synthesizer strut of their electroclash-era albums Black Cherry and Supernature, while “Everything Is Never Enough” shares the bright-eyed poptimism of Head First. But these new songs avoid the genre-pastiche of their counterparts. Silver Eye’s tracks have a sincere, blunt-force feeling that’s new and closer to the actual core of their musical identity. It’s like Kiss taking off the make-up, but, you know, good.

Silver Eye’s more esoteric numbers are even more impressive. “Illuminating his eyes and fur/Ohhhhh….magnificent,” Goldfrapp sighs on “Tigerman,” a come-on to the title character in which attraction to a new lover is treated like a discovery every bit as transformative as making contact with a whole new lifeform. The pulsing jam “Become the One” uses vocal pitch-shifting to make its message of self-realization sound beamed in from an external alien intelligence. (Sometimes, that’s what self-realization requires.) And a trio of ballads—“Zodiac Black,” the song on which producer Haxan Cloak’s haunted atmosphere is most apparent; “Moon in Your Mouth,” a record of absolutely desperate romanticism; and “Ocean,” lead single, album closer, and cri de coeur—combine nature imagery and big, echoey washes of sound to create a sense of space as enveloping, absorbing, and suffocating as anything on the band’s three “quiet” albums. If nothing here quite reaches knockout-blow strength, fine—it doesn’t really need to. Goldfrapp have found their platonic ideal, and that’s ideal indeed.

The Guardian 60

Their first few years saw a series of radical transformations, but as the duo return to synthpop, another big shift – and adventure – is overdue

Goldfrapp’s seventh album seems fascinated by the subject of transformation. A song inspired by a documentary about transgender children – “become the one you know you are,” urges its chorus – rubs shoulders with a song in which a man turns into a tiger. It’s not entirely clear whether this second change is literal or metaphorical, although Alison Goldfrapp sounds keen on the idea, either way. “Magnificent … primordial,” she coos, like an admiring judge examining a competitor at Crufts, or whatever the equivalent of Crufts is for men who’ve turned into tigers.

Of course, Goldfrapp’s devotees would say transformation is an entirely fitting topic for the duo to essay: there have certainly been some dramatic stylistic shifts in their career. While her partner, Will Gregory, lurked unseen in the shadows, Alison Goldfrapp seemed to turn in fairly short order from a purveyor of cinematic ballads into a woman whose live shows involved playing a theremin with her crotch while looking like a besequinned Nazi air hostess, and later from that into a bucolic folkie in a harlequin outfit.

Related: Alison Goldfrapp: ‘Artists are private people, observers’

The Guardian 60

(Mute)

Goldfrapp’s entire career has been a series of comprehensive reinventions, so it’s something of a surprise that so much of their seventh album finds them returning to the stomping glam rock/synth fusions of 2003’s Black Cherry. The lack of progression isn’t a problem: opener Anymore (about transgender children), the standout Everything Is Never Enough and the brooding, PJ-Harvey-goes-electro Ocean are a match for anything Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory have released before. The Garbage-like Systemagic even overcomes being hamstrung by a title seemingly designed to conjure unwanted flashbacks to Five Star, Romford’s answer to the Jackson 5. However, Silver Eye sags badly in the middle. Faux Suede Drifter and Zodiac Black , in particular, are all texture and no song, ambient washes of sound topped with uncharacteristically disengaging vocals. It all makes for a slightly underwhelming whole.