ΔΙΣΚΟΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ

GOLDFRAPP: ALISON HIDING BEHIND THE SEVENTH TREE
by George Georgiou (song292@yahoo.gr)



There is a rare bird sinking into bucolic soundscapes.She smoothly spreads her voice echoing between the temples of Kate Bush and Liz Fraser: an ethereal,vivid child gently deserting her former sexuality...All that electro-pop, glam beat lustful rhythm has faded in the distance of empty dancehalls.Alison is pulling Will Grecory by the hand to a dim pastoral horizon haunted by an eerie romance.Rural Somerset was the right place to accept the influences of Nick Drake, early Pink Floyd and the soundtrack of cult english horror classic "The wicker man" and finally lead them to a misty stillness of their folktronica style.Acoustic guitars, string arrangements and harp samples carve the path with a pseudo-retrospective suspicion ,sometimes easy listening lullabies sounding like traps or modern pagan psychedelic folk ceremonies promising everything and nothing."Clowns"captures the frame of "The seventh tree" with Alison's haunting throat transforming the words like jumping from glorious 4AD heroes Cocteau Twins days.The same crystalline distortion seals the evolution of "Little bird" as the sexy,glam,dancing heroine of "Black Cherry" and "Supernature" has turned into a fairy playing games of patience and spiritual expectation in a world with birds' masks and newspaper hats.All of her imaginary lovers on the planet follow her gently in her numb ,hypnotic,woozy landscapes turning their dance-steps into deep confession promenades.From the sensitive irony of "Clowns" and mystically singing about breast implants("only clowns would play with those balloons") to the pavement smell of the rain completing an inevitable circle in "Monster Love" ("everything comes around,bringing us back again, here is where we start and where we end"),Alison takes every pose of expectation sometimes as a quiet observer,others as a vivid girl obeying to weird voices in her head.As you race all of her pastoral promenades to find her former ego, all of a sudden you realize that the adventure was no bad at all.The point of the journey is not to arrive...