GOLDFRAPP'S second album "Black Cherry" - when not busy going Gold and picking up awards all over the shop - was an exercise in lascivious, suggestive and extremely seductive electro-sex, with (for once) all the eroticism that implies actually involved. It was (and remains) a fine album that, when not connecting at crotch level, made you realise how far ahead of most of the competition Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory really were/are.
While still tantalising and innuendo-fuelled, "Black Cherry" itself is perhaps the album's most graceful moment, and it works well in the single format, with Gregory's dignified synth wash swaddling Goldfrapp's breathily sensuous vocals like a magic carpet. "How can it be, I can taste you" she purrs at the outset before soaring off to present maybe her very best vocal to date with help from a frankly majestic string arrangement.
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The CD single also delivers a new track, "Gone To Earth", which is good enough to have made the parent album. Slow, lingering and wintry, it's enhanced by icy, aching synths, a thoroughly delicious vocal from Alison and - of all things - sleigh bells, which are a genius move in this context. Indeed, on hearing this it's no surprise that Goldfrapp are rumoured to be involved in an as-yet unnamed new film soundtrack as their music is taking on a truly memorable, cinematic quality.
Predictably, then, yet another fine single from a duo who are rightly coming to mainstream prominence. The evidence suggests they'll be able to handle it.
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