It takes Alison Goldfrapp more than a full verse into Silver Eye’s leadoff track “Anymore” before she utters a single word with more than one syllable: “You’re what I want. You’re what I need. Give me your love. Make me a freak.” Reductive? Considering her and collaborator Will Gregory—whose past lyrics would gussy up their earthy emotions and desires in hazy surrealism like, “Wolf lady sucks my brain” and, “Now take me dancing at the disco where you buy your Winnebago”—you might be tempted to think so. Prior to “Anymore,” Goldfrapp hid their most verbally explicit expression of lust (“Put your dirty angel face between my legs and knicker lace”) in an elaborate fantasy about a tryst with a traveling carny titled, appropriately enough, “Twist.”
But the direct approach suits this new album, the group’s first since 2013’s Tales of Us. Ever since the pair swapped the John Barry ambience of their debut album Felt Mountain for the electro-glam of its successor Black Cherry, they’ve staked their identity on being able to assume new identities at will. Wanna double down on that sexy “Spirit in the Sky” shimmer? There’s Supernature. Wanna go pastoral? Check out Seventh Tree. Wanna trade Gary Numan and Marc Bolan for the Pointer Sisters and circa-“Jump” Van Halen? Head for Head First. By contrast, Silver Eye is a synthesis—a combination of all the things the group has done well. “Become the one you know you are,” commands a key track, and they’re teaching by example. Who needs many syllables to express something so fundamental?
Glimpses of past glories are more evident in some songs than others. “Anymore” and its immediate follow-up “Systemagic” return to the synthesizer strut of their electroclash-era albums Black Cherry and Supernature, while “Everything Is Never Enough” shares the bright-eyed poptimism of Head First. But these new songs avoid the genre-pastiche of their counterparts. Silver Eye’s tracks have a sincere, blunt-force feeling that’s new and closer to the actual core of their musical identity. It’s like Kiss taking off the make-up, but, you know, good.
Silver Eye’s more esoteric numbers are even more impressive. “Illuminating his eyes and fur/Ohhhhh….magnificent,” Goldfrapp sighs on “Tigerman,” a come-on to the title character in which attraction to a new lover is treated like a discovery every bit as transformative as making contact with a whole new lifeform. The pulsing jam “Become the One” uses vocal pitch-shifting to make its message of self-realization sound beamed in from an external alien intelligence. (Sometimes, that’s what self-realization requires.) And a trio of ballads—“Zodiac Black,” the song on which producer Haxan Cloak’s haunted atmosphere is most apparent; “Moon in Your Mouth,” a record of absolutely desperate romanticism; and “Ocean,” lead single, album closer, and cri de coeur—combine nature imagery and big, echoey washes of sound to create a sense of space as enveloping, absorbing, and suffocating as anything on the band’s three “quiet” albums. If nothing here quite reaches knockout-blow strength, fine—it doesn’t really need to. Goldfrapp have found their platonic ideal, and that’s ideal indeed.
