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Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong>Read more<\/p>\n \u201cI wanna live as a fantasy,\u201d sighs Alison Goldfrapp<\/a> on \u201cFind Xanadu\u201d, the lead single from her second album, Flux. Her vaporous vocal coats the electro-pop pulse with a fine mist of her trademark sexy shimmer. At times,<\/strong> the airy diffusion of these 10 new songs has the power to make the listener similarly, blissfully weightless. But at others, the melodies and meanings seem to evaporate in the mid-tempo mizzle. <\/p>\n Interviewed for the release of her solo debut,<\/a>The Love Invention (2023), Goldfrapp said she\u2019d taken a break from working with her bandmate Will Gregory because their partnership had become \u201ctoo comfortable and familiar\u201d. She wanted to challenge herself with something new. That\u2019s all well and good, but it\u2019s disconcerting that she has (so far) sounded less in control of her solo work than she does on the joint venture. Although both the solid, retro stylings of The Love Invention and the more delicately dreamy Flux contain some lovely melodies and beautifully detailed production, the woman herself seems less edgily present than she while haunting 2000\u2019s \u201cLovely Head\u201d or on 2003\u2019s \u201cStrict Machine\u201d. Despite all her S&M stage theatrics, it does leave you wondering if Gregory\u2019s the kinky one after all. <\/p>\n Which is not to say that the vanilla breeze of Flux doesn\u2019t yield its own sweet and subtle \u2013 if less distinctive \u2013 pleasures. Proggy synths weave in and out of the strobed rhythms, lending the sound a gentle, yearning, sci-fi glow, like the muted throb of ET\u2019s heart. A pang of melancholy underpins opener \u201cHey Hi Hello\u201d, which carries a gossamer echo of \u201cSay Hello, Wave Goodbye\u201d (1981) by fellow S&M hymners Soft Cell. It\u2019s a regretful breakup song for a love that doesn\u2019t \u201cmake sense anymore\u201d. A tumbling vocal line is reflected by a proggy synth, like neon on a wet pavement. <\/p>\n \u201cFinding Xanadu\u201d blows kisses back to the Eighties in a tune-quote from Fleetwood Mac<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLittle Lies\u201d. The duller plod of \u201cSound & Light\u201d is one of several songs to find the singer looking up at the sky \u2013 on this occasion to find \u201cemerald ribbons unfolding\u201d. The greater static charge of \u201cUltrasky\u201d sees her heart opened by the rain. \u201cCinnamon Light\u201d evokes a summer haze. <\/p>\n When she was a child, Goldfrapp\u2019s father used to take her out into the English countryside at night and encourage her to listen for the tiny sounds that other people missed. You can still hear her finding the magic of nature on tracks such as \u201cStrange Things Happen\u201d, over which she swoops like a bat up into her higher range \u2013 one-part Donna Summer<\/a> to two-parts Kate Bush<\/a> \u2013 to evoke a magical romance. \u201cOrdinary Day\u201d urges us to find wonder in the mundane. I struggled to locate it, though, in the bump-and-grind club beat of the more Ibiza-fied \u201cPlay It (Shine Like a Nova Star)\u201d, on which her vocodered voice is lost and crushed in an overcrowded mix. <\/p>\n The only true standout is \u201cReverberotic\u201d, which finds Goldfrapp getting a little of her old-school freak on. Notes melt and return to form at her whim as she twiddles the knobs. It\u2019s no \u201cOh La La\u201d, but there\u2019s fun to be had with lava lamp lyrics like: \u201cLunar goo \/ I want to bathe in you.\u201d It still could have used a little of Madonna\u2019s wink\u2019n\u2019twerk in the delivery. This time around, Goldfrapp\u2019s too much the ethereal girl. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-345986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115031668840269570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}