Alison Goldfrapp: The Love Invention album review — rapturous disco on first solo effort

Alison Goldfrapp is the public face of a band that doesn’t like publicity. She’s the frontwoman for the duo Goldfrapp, which she formed in London with Will Gregory in 1999. Their songs draw on a disparate set of coordinates, from Ennio Morricone to electro, via glam and English folk-rock. Each reference point is pursued to the point of pastiche, yet by some process of alchemy the results invariably bear a Goldfrappian imprimatur.

Sunlight being the best disinfectant, the pair prefer to concoct these lushly soundtracked fantasies behind thick velvet drapes. Gregory, an electronic musician with an expertise in vintage synthesisers, is so self-effacing that he doesn’t appear at their live shows. Goldfrapp, who sings and co-writes the music, has a performer’s taste for role play, variously appearing in past albums as dance floor dominatrix or pagan folkie. But she also tries to keep her private life out of the way. Although named after her, Goldfrapp (the band) isn’t a vehicle for personal memoir.

The singer hasn’t split from Gregory, but they haven’t made a record together since 2017’s Silver Eye. Released under her name, The Love Invention is her first solo album. Its songs gravitate towards the disco side of her output with Gregory. Running through them is a vaguely outlined but powerfully felt sense of rapture.

“You’ve arrived at the sublime,” Goldfrapp sings breathily in opening track “NeverStop”. Co-produced by Richard X, a Noughties dance-pop specialist, the album casts the singer as a kind of shamanic Kylie Minogue. Her sighs and murmurs evoke an intoxicating sense of bliss, the notion of minds and bodies as one. “You’ve got me spinning in a centrifuge,” she whispers languorously in “Subterfuge”, as though borrowing the language of Kylie’s “Spinning Around”.

The songs’ scenarios are fuzzy. Goldfrapp is keen to dismiss literal-minded suggestions that they represent a post-lockdown reawakening or real-life love affair. Dreams are frequently mentioned in the lyrics, but none that could furnish a shrink with penetrating insights. “Think I saw you in a dream last night,” Goldfrapp croons at one point, as charmingly vaporous in memory as voice.

Her ecstatic reveries unfold against a contrastingly dynamic musical backdrop. Rubbery electronic basslines and locked-on dance beats give the songs a pulsing energy. Intensity builds and ebbs immersively. Like a disco koan, finding yourself on the dance floor and losing yourself in music are shown to be the same.

★★★★☆

‘The Love Invention’ is released by Skint Records