Alison Goldfrapp goes solo, Potter Payper finds life after prison – the week’s best albums
Alison Goldfrapp, The Love Invention ★★★★☆
There is something deeply pious about clubs: the hypnotising effect of a mass of bodies swaying to the same rhythm, sudden bursts of ecstasy, and collective worship of the DJ raised above. Alison Goldfrapp, who went from convent schoolgirl to ‘00s electronica pioneer, understands this better than anyone.
And so, hallelujah, here comes The Love Invention, Goldfrapp’s first solo album after decades of hits as Goldfrapp, the duo she formed with Will Gregory. A product of the pandemic, when dancefloors were off-limits, Goldfrapp enlisted Richard X – who co-produced Goldfrapp’s 2010 single Alive, from Grammy-nominated album Head First – and Ghost Culture’s James Greenwood to help create the 56-year-old’s “tribute to the dancefloor”.
When Goldfrapp’s debut album Felt Mountain was released in 2000, European electronic music was undergoing a reinvention that saw the sounds of grotty underground clubs explode into the mainstream. In the years that followed, it was nigh on impossible to switch to a commercial radio station without hearing sleazy, floor-filling anthem Strict Machine from 2003’s Black Cherry, or Ooh La La, the synth-ridden juggernaut from 2005’s Supernature.
Along with contemporaries such as Robyn, Santigold and Little Boots, Goldfrapp’s arrival seemed to announce that the future of alternative music relied on synths, not guitars; the ready-made soundtrack for the fun-loving millennial generation, who welcomed the turn of the century with an optimism that’s never truly been allowed to take off.
“How do you see yourself / How do you imagine the world around you,” a breathy male voice asks in opener NeverStop, which fuses synth-pop with jubilant disco and seems primed for a night under the black skies of Glastonbury – where Goldfrapp performs next month.
Subterfuge, although slower and more melancholic in tone – echoing Goldfrapp’s standout 2008 single A&E, about an evening of hedonism giving way to a crashing comedown – brings to mind the sugary, hyper-production of the late Glaswegian producer SOPHIE, or, more recently, the pop hits of Charli XCX.
The Beat Divine also starts off slow, as Goldfrapp whispers, over and over, that “Only love can make you feel alive”. Erotic yet never crass, it’s the verbal equivalent of your first night spent in a nightclub, watching arms wrap around waists or heads lean in, slowly, to patiently listening ears.
A musician accustomed to years of being called strange by critics and audiences who were intimidated by her aloof, genderless persona, Goldfrapp’s arrival as a solo artist marks a new dawn for her career. “Everything has changed / In my head, in my heart, in my face”, she croons on Digging Deeper Now. Perhaps – but her command over that mass of bodies remains. Poppie Platt
Potter Payper, Real Back In Style ★★★★☆
Potter Payper’s is a unique career trajectory. From oddball future prospect spitting grainy verses at the birth of the UK’s road rap scene, to spending five years in prison just as the world started taking British rappers seriously, he re-emerged in 2020 to a future he hadn’t been around to see arrive. But despite a glut of newly minted stars enjoying chart success and packing out festival fields, Potter’s fans hadn’t forgotten. He’s enjoyed a Lazarus return.
Real Back In Style is Potter’s debut album, more than a decade in arriving, and he stuffs in verses like he’s making up for lost time: He can do the one-liners destined for Instagram captions, and he can do the storytelling raps too, keeping you on the hook for five minutes-plus without resorting to hooky choruses. Mostly though, his elder status removes the need to preen and posture, and so what comes forth is disarmingly honest music that indicates a newly mature era for UK rap.
Over slick, cinematic arrangements he describes kitchen-sink dramas in unsparing detail, grabbing the gimbal as he skips from shot to shot like a rap Tarantino. All My Life, If I Had offers a twisting, gripping autobiography of family tension, ambition, and a slide into criminality; Multifaceted is pure flexing, undercut by the unshakeable flavour of poverty and abuse that still hangs in the back of his mouth. “My life’s a horror movie, and I’m the protagonist,” he spits on the aptly-titled Scenes. He is guilty of hitting the same note a little too often, but it lands here (to a sympathetic ear) more as emphasis than padding.
When Potter was released from jail mid-pandemic, he got himself fitted for a set of diamond-studded grills. “Now Potter got grills, and he can’t stop smiling,” he splashed on 2020’s Plain Clothes. For the cover of Real Back In Style, there’s no sign of those diamonds: just a line of crooked gnashers, split in the broadest broad grin. The money’s nice, sure. But for Potter, nothing tastes quite like freedom and recognition. As he spits on the opener and title track: “You ain’t gotta be the richest, just be the realest.” But in the days leading up to his album’s release, another twist – and another arrest. For Potter, the cycle continues. It all feels too familiar. And it all sounds real. Will Pritchard
