Having read as many reviews as I can stand about Goldfrapp’s latest album, I have still not come any closer to figuring out if I actually like it or not. I’ve only heard bits and bobs of Felt Mountain and started listening to Goldfrapp in earnest with 2002’s Black Cherry, so maybe I expect a bit more edge and a bit more weirdness from Alison and Will—fewer sunkissed glamour photo shoots like the ones commissioned for Seventh Tree, and more half-horse electroglam cutouts. When your overriding vision of Goldfrapp involves Alison Goldfrapp on stage at Glastonbury wearing tall leather boots and a horse’s tail, abusing a portable theremin as though she were wearing a strap-on, readjusting to Seventh Tree’s far less carnivalesque atmosphere can take some time.

About that cover: it looks like someone took the same aesthetic from Beth Orton’s Daybreaker and recast it in Sherwood Forest. Somewhat fitting in that Orton took a similar low-key chillout approach to her most recent album, 2006’s Comfort of Strangers, though Orton threw away the electronics completely. Goldfrapp is infinitely more successful in that Seventh Tree remains interesting even in its most serene moments. It even approaches the electro sound perfected on Black Cherry and revisited on Supernature at times, though Alison’s old seductive persona never makes an appearance even on relatively bleep-heavy tracks like “Happiness.”

But for the most part, Seventh Tree remains a bit of a cipher—I’m still on the fence. Goldfrapp’s previous formula had worn thin after just two albums, so at least it’s not an even duller version of Supernature. And so far, the new album has proven difficult to dismiss outright. It just requires a lot of my attention to appreciate some aspects of the album; otherwise critic favourites like “A & E” and “Caravan Girl” go in one ear and out the other to little effect.