When it comes to abrupt transformations, sometimes it’s transparently shallow, other times it’s confounding, and sometimes it just feels right. Goldfrapp’s fifth album, Head First, falls firmly into the latter category. After a decade of lush, ethereal spooky pop music, they’ve finally shed all pretense and gone and made a real, bona fide pop record. It’s a surprising shift considering how wholeheartedly they’ve thrown themselves into it, but perhaps not entirely unpredictable after the rather boring (and poorly-received) folky experiment of 2008’s Seventh Tree. The UK duo’s latest is certainly more similar to their first three records than the last one, but it’s a full-on exploration of a poppier, dancier sound. For the most part they’re no longer hedging their bets with hazy production or tentative songwriting (what held Supernature back from true greatness), instead diving into the rampant eighties nostalgia currently making its way through the indie circuit. Thankfully, it feels more like a natural progression than bandwagon-hopping, even if it occasionally disappoints.
What’s most apparent with Head First is that this thing really hits you over the head with melodies — pure, unadulterated pop melodies. There’s few weird vocal effects, no avant production flourishes, just candy-sweet vocals singing catchy little tunes. The album takes off immediately (excuse the pun) with first single “Rocket,” bustling with fluffy eighties synthesizers and Alison Goldfrapp giving one of her best vocal performances, wryly humourous and deathly serious when appropriate. Every line is sung carefully, perfectly; the cool determination of the verses, the breathless pre-chorus, the euphoric (and silly) chorus. Not many singers could handle a chorus like “Oh, I’ve got a rocket/Oh, you’re going on it” so gracefully. Unfortunately, while “Rocket” is definitely a harbinger of their new sound, it feels like the shiny finalized product sitting amongst a bunch of hasty prototypes.
Head First is a friendly, accessible album, but it does come at the price of a bit of depth; while Goldfrapp have never been wordsmiths, these songs, despite their pop-confection perfection, are frustratingly insubstantive. Most of the songs immediately evoke other artists, and the production is generic even if it’s eminently enjoyable; the throwback style is done well, and one of the more convincing jobs, but it’s hard to say this music would be anything special without Alison Goldfrapp’s voice, and even then it sounds like she’s occasionally imitating other singers. “Believer,” sounds like Metric, “Alive” sounds remarkably like any song off of Kyle Minogue’s Fever, “Dreaming” is a terribly derivative mess that sounds more than a little like Stevie Nicks, and “Hunt” feels like a leftover from M83’s Saturdays=Youth . On top of that, the album loses a little bit of a steam after the title track, devolving into half-baked songs, repetitive and uninspiring; each one has its own memorable little peak or hook but the songs don’t hold up very long under even minor scrutiny.
It’s hard to know what to think of Head First; one one hand it’s a bewitching pop album, bursting with hooks and ear-candy production. On the other hand, it’s shamelessly derivative of some of the most obvious touchstones imaginable, and while the melodies are strong the songwriting is perfunctory and predictable. Take “I Wanna Life,” Head First’s penultimate track, with its propulsive verse and fluorescent chorus — it all sounds very nice but it also sounds like a million other things. There’s nothing particularly ‘Goldfrapp’ about this album, and even if the progression feels like a necessary one (since, especially as misfire closer “Voicething” suggests, their weirder ethereal side had long gone stale), they’ve still got some work to do to make it their own. For now, they’ve left us with a great album to put on a party, forty-or-so minutes of mindless pop; and that’s nothing bad: you wouldn’t have found a bigger proponent of the poppier direction of “Rocket” than me. But there’s just something missing here, something crucial. It’s all surface — if the album sounds revelatory at first, give it a few listens and you’ll realize it’s just because you’ve heard most of this stuff already in other places. If you want something to get lost in, you’ll have to look somewhere else, or maybe just wait for the next one, when they’ve had a little bit more time to find their new sound.
