Two years ago Goldfrapp were a best-selling, achingly fashionable, Mercury-nominated musical phenomenon, the kind of ubiquitous band to be heard on every TV trailer, in every other Hoxton bar. Thankfully they seem to have gotten over it.
Not that you'd know it for the first half of this gig, leaning as it does on the wildly over-rated debut, 'Felt Mountain'. The band's technical ability and talent are beyond reproach, but too often in the past it has been employed on music so obsessively studied, so contrived, it becomes unlovable. Drawing on the same modishly updated sixties sounds that fuelled Portishead and Air, Goldfrapp were actually distinctly less interesting than either.
Moody but melodic, retro with just enough modernity, Goldfrapp suggested a manufactured band for people who thought they knew better, coffee table music for occasional clubbers. Alison Goldfrapp - tonight dressed as an icy Sally Bowles in perky bowler hat and vertigo heels - has an undeniable vampish charisma, but this earlier music lacks the bite and frisson to match her stage presence.
So, second song 'Human' is a note perfect homage to John Barry's orchestral atmospherics, but tries so hard to be icy cool it ends up merely cold. The newer 'Hairy Trees' is torch song chic from a textbook, and about as emotionally involving as most textbooks. It all sounds quite wonderful - particularly Goldfrapp's sublime voice - but is all too easy to imagine relegated to the background of a dinner party. The glaring exception from this older material is 'Lovely Head', a song weird and twisted enough to cause any guest to choke on their ciabatta. Live, Goldfrapp crank up its oddness, percussion booming and strings squalling while the singer stalks the stage dreamily intoning its doomy words. Mesmeric.
But it's with the 'Black Cherry' material that Goldfrapp prove they've truly found their voice. From the first notes of 'Train' the tempo of the performance shifts abruptly from soothing to bruising. Will Gregory's violin is retired and queasy, lurching keyboards take its place, Goldfrapp's voice melting into the narcotic, erotic throb. At last they dare to sound less than tasteful, and become much the better for it, making music that lives in the hips as much as it lives in the head. 'Tiptoe' follows, a swampy sex song built on a buzzing Chemical Brothers keyboard riff and Goldfrapp's liquid vocals, which merge into a manic, fevered rendition of 'Twist'. If this is mood music, it's mood music for the psychotic.
What has rapidly become a triumphant performance closes with 'Strict Machine', a song so careless of cool it steals from Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love', and has nearly the same orgasmic exuberance. A glittery downpour explodes from the ceiling, a joyful, kitsch touch that Goldfrapp would once surely have disdained. However, they've clearly learned an important lesson. Being fashionable isn't all that hard. Being good is.
