Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/08/05
Label: Mute

With risible pretenders like The Bravery storming the charts and Kylie and Madonna both having dispatched their electro-pop albums some years ago, it might reasonably be imagined that - despite determined attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by the superfluous likes of Juliet - the genre is now dead in the water. In which case, who needs a new album by electro-glam goddess Alison Goldfrapp and her sidekick, wunderkind composer Will Gregory?

The answer is - pretty much everyone. At least, everyone who understands what it is to feel a disco pulse flood so irresistibly through their entire body that they feel a giddy impulse to rush for the nearest dancefloor. Goldfrapp made tentative steps toward mirror-balled glory with "Black Cherry" from 2003 - in particular, with its "Twist" and "Strict Machine" singles - but with their third album, they've strutted confidently into the spotlight - surely their (super)natural habitat.

"Supernature" - and how perfectly that title represents the enclosed long-legged, high-glossed, glitter-dusted beauty - opens with Top Five single "Ooh La La", a purring party-starter that suggests a feminised Suicide, glammed-up in the dressing room by T Rex. "Switch me on, turn me up," Alison Goldfrapp heavy breathes - and you know she ain't talking television. From there, it's a first-class trip all the way: "Ride A White Horse" neatly references both Bianca Jagger's infamous equestrian entrance to Studio 54 and that chunk of minimal mechanico funk beloved of all groovers, Laid Back's "White Horse".

"Fly Me Away" leaves vapour-trailed swooshes in a pure blue, pop sky; for "Koko", Goldfrapp comes over all Kate Bush, but her breathy desire is offset by a dark, Numanoid synth line; "Satin Chic" again reveals Ms Goldfrapp's love of Olivia Newton-John (a cover of "Physical" was once part of their live set) and Gregory's of Depeche Mode, although he smartly knocks-out the central lurching motif not on a synth, but a honky-tonk piano.

"You Never Know", "Let It Take You" and "Time Out From The World" - a Bush-toned incantation, hushed, Bassey-like lullaby and dramatic, Bond-themed beauty respectively - hark back to Goldfrapp's "Felt Mountain" debut, providing dreamy respite from the shimmy and strut.

"Supernature" is the rarest of records - one which arrives late in the life span of a genre but defines it so completely and perfectly that a full stop can be placed right there. Nu-disco perfection, pretty much.

    by Sharon O'Connell