“I definitely believe that we confused people as to what we were or sounded like,” says Alison Goldfrapp of the platinum-plated albums and songs of her past as one half of the London electronic duo Goldfrapp, alongside Will Gregory. “Are they dance? Is it rock? What are they?”
To that end, Goldfrapp’s decades of boundaryless electronic mishmash—from the flash dance of 2005’s Supernature and 2010’s Head First to quieter works such as 2013’s Tales of Us—is just the sort of thing that Charli XCX, Halsey, and Dua Lipa do now to great Gen Z wonder and acclaim. Brat or no brat, these are the sorts of innovations that Lady Goldfrapp had to walk through so that others could run. At first, she denies any possible inspiration over these 21st century pop artists, waving the thought away quickly. “I don’t think that I’ve had any influence over them whatsoever,” she says with a slight guffaw. “I don’t think that any of those people know what I do at all.”
Yet when she considers the superiority of a multi-layered dance album such as Supernature, or the spry spirit of pop on her newly released second solo album Flux—along with Goldfrapp’s commanding soprano voice and the vivid imagery her lyrics portray—her hold over that which has forever been without genre is clear. “When we did Supernature and “Black Cherry,” people were still very into genre identification,” she says. “I’ve always had eclectic tastes in music. I’ve always liked putting my voice through different effects pedals through different machines—bending it, manipulating it—to do different things, so as to not sound human. Now, thankfully, genres are much more blurred. Anything goes now, and that, for me, is much healthier. There’s no more battling to fit in. Women artists are all so confident now. They speak their mind, and are gobby and ballsy.” Thank Goldfrapp for that health.
Though she might not cop to being influential on the genre-jumbling tip, Goldfrapp will own up to finding her way to independence after nearly three decades in the music business. Recording for the UK’s Mute label since the duo’s 2000 debut, Felt Mountain, Goldfrapp now is the proud owner of AG Records, along with the masters to her music—a new gig both frightening and exhilarating. “Right now, it just felt like the perfect time to do this,” says Goldfrapp. “It’s liberating.” The liberation of being a business woman carries over into the massive mutability and freedom of the aptly titled Flux. “Creatively, I’m in flux all the time,” she says. “The word ‘flux’ itself—I love the sound, look, and feel of it. It’s a very speculative proposition.”
Initially intended as an EP (“Something focused with fewer song was actually taxing, harder to do, than making a whole album”), Flux, like her debut solo album The Love Intention, was co-produced by keyboardist Richard X with additional songwriting and production bits from Stefan Storm. There was no particular start point, “and no specific formula in which to develop,” she says. “The songs of Flux were all nurtured differently.”
“Now, thankfully, genres are much more blurred. Anything goes now, and that, for me, is much healthier. There’s no more battling to fit in.”
While the sugar-coated likes of “Hey Hi Hello” and “Sound & Light” are pure pop delights, and “Cinnamon Light” is one of Flux’s most buoyant bangers, the slowly reflective and prismatic “Ordinary Day” is an anomaly—something that seems to have surprised its makers. “Richard and I did that track alone and started out very small, just with me singing at home for about a half a year until I found it lost among my email,” she says. “It grew from such a small start, and so different from all of the other tracks on Flux.”
That’s some compliment, finding an anomaly within a body of work that already exists as anomalous. The continuous anomaly, then, is what defines Alison Goldfrapp without confining her. “Nothing is ever complete,” she says. “A creative life is a continuation of something else. I just happen to be the pin in it all, the connection. I never feel as if any one thing is finished, and I always want to be starting something else.” FL
