[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

I haven’t heard most of Felt Mountain, the first Goldfrapp album, so I can only guess its contents based on the many reviews out there. But if you’d tossed me Supernature and Black Cherry at the same time and I’d never listened to them before, I’d probably have guessed that Supernature came first. When Black Cherry surfaced two years ago, a lot of people didn’t know quite what to make of it; I guess they were expecting something more along the lines of Portishead with an orchestra. Instead, they got a fully realized vision of neon-inflected electronic pop, at once seductive and fetishistic. It made you feel a little dirty in a good way. Once people got used to Alison Goldfrapp parading around on stage wearing a horse’s tail and playing a theremin, Black Cherry made a lot of sense.

Supernature doesn’t get under your skin in the same way. More cabaret than strip club this time around, Goldfrapp returns with a set of songs that sound less polished—perhaps on purpose—but also less coherent as an album. More comfortable with the mid-tempo tracks than the extremes, Supernature is an oddly tepid affair despite the presence of some very good songs. Much of the damage occurs at the beginning of the album. If “Crystalline Green” was the archway to a new world, “Ooh La La” is simply a welcome back to the fold, a somewhat uninspired mixture of “Train” and “Strict Machine.” And while “Lovely 2 C U” is well played, it’s fairly obvious that no new ground’s being broken here.

There are too many good hooks and alluring melodies on Supernature to write it off, though. Goldfrapp is at its best when the band tries its hand at ballads; “Let It Take You” and “Time Out From The World” showcase Alison Goldfrapp’s voice in ways the louder, brasher tracks don’t allow. They glide effortlessly through a narcotic dreamscape, the closest the album comes to taking you to another world. But for some reason, the other tracks don’t stick. Perhaps without the thematic unity of the previous album, the new tracks fall apart. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with “Satin Chic” or “Slide In,” two of the better full-vamp tracks; it’s just that you’re not going to remember them the same way you remember, say, “Tiptoe” or “Twist.”

Supernature, then, is a bit frustrating; you keep hoping there’s something you’ve missed, something that pulls this album out of the muck and makes it truly great. But perhaps one review said it best when it guessed Supernature worked best as remix fodder. Give the songs a heaping dose of canned beats and outrageous samples and they’ll light up the clubs, I’m sure. The Tiefschwarz remix of “Ooh La La” is proof positive. On its own merits, though, Supernature is good—but not great.