Goldfrapp, Head First

Goldfrapp, Head First[Mute]

Reviewed by: Chris Polley

Sometimes I think the whole concept of “singles” should be outlawed. I actually haven’t had such murderous thoughts on the subject since I was an even more obnoxiously pretentious teenager and proclaimed publicly to my 10^th grade English class that the radio was poisoning our minds because it told us which songs to like from which albums by which bands. But now the vindictive ostentation is flooding back into my skull, so make your choice, reader. Are you willing to take the elite grandstanding or will you depart now, while you have the chance?

If you’re still reading, thank you. Whether your decision was made purposefully or ambivalence matters not; I am just glad to have someone, anyone, to vent to about this tiresome staple of the music industry. Let us use the single “Rocket” off of Goldfrapp’s new album Head First as our primary example in this emotional dissection of the topic at hand. Typically one would hear the single from an upcoming release on the radio, at least in the old business practices of music. Well, if you’re indie you don’t listen to the radio anymore, and if you are in the getting-smaller-everyday minority of people who listen to college radio, you don’t hear singles; you hear songs chosen by the DJ and/or college student worker who programs their station’s music.

Now I first heard “Rocket” through Lala, a quite popular streaming music service where if you give them an email address and sign up to be a member, you can listen to as much music as you could possibly imagine, all for free, albeit only once unless you want to start paying to own what they call “web songs.” Being the predictable cheapskate music lover that I am, and that most music lovers are, by the way (natch), I have not nor do I ever plan to buy a “web song.” If twenty albums I’m interested in hearing are added to Lala every week that I can add to my listening queue, and only skip through a couple albums that turn out to be duds, between that and my own music collection (both digital and physical) I will never have the need to buy the ability to listen to a song or album more than once.

So when I heard “Rocket” my desire wasn’t to buy the online web single, or even to go download or buy the digital or CD single. My desire was to hear the forthcoming full-length album on which it appeared.  I did what most indie kids do: I heard the song, fell deeply in love with it, G-chatted to a friend about how effing catchy it was and what its approximate 80s gloriousness ratio was, and wrote a blog post about how much I anticipated the full release from a band I thought had gotten too boring but just might make a comeback with this next album.  For the next month or so I read everything I could about Head First, the London duo’s fifth long-player, and listened to my much beloved real copy of the band’s third record Supernature, imagining with ignorant glee how awesome the next set of songs, alongside “Rocket”, were going to be.

And then I heard Head First. And, really, that’s exactly what I did: I heard it, but didn’t listen. In fact, especially with “Rocket” up front as the opening track, I bit my lip and shoulder-danced with my headphones on for the album’s beginning minutes and very quickly, after the solid-but-not-mindblowing second track “Believer”, froze up with disappointment. I had been let down, which is nothing new, but as I spent more and more time coming to grips with the realization it began to hurt more – that I had built up a record so much in my mind that the hype killed all possible pleasure that could have been gained if I had just pleasantly accepted a minor upswing since the band’s no-surprises-here sub-par 4^th album Seventh Tree. What was more unnerving than this, which I’ve experienced before and handled perfectly fine (well depending on how you define “fine” I suppose), was that I had been tricked into the music industry’s age-old tactic of single-baiting. The sparkly lead track was dangled in front of me, I licked my chops endlessly, which just built up more and more positivity and desire for the future within me, and then when the bait fell, it tasted glorious on the first bite, and like dog shit on a string more and more with each successive chomp.

This is all incredibly unfair to Goldfrapp because while they shouldn’t be let off the hook (after all, they made the record), they’re not the ones that teased me with the delicious catchy chorus and thick warm synthesized beat, making me thinking I’d get more of the same when it was thrown in with another batch of songs created at or around the same time. Partly, yes, it’s the label’s fault for propagating this stale and dated technique to the music-buying public in a day and age when baiting customers is mostly all for naught (due to the, you know, stealing). But mostly it’s my fault for letting my jaw unhinge and my cumbersome cartoon tongue to roll on out of my mouth agape like an awards show red carpet at the sound of Alison Goldfrapp’s captivating croon. Hell, what was I thinking proclaiming the album one of my favorites of the year before even hearing the damn thing? Ah, the tricky game of the single. Just when you think you’re above it, it bashes you in your shins and takes you down a notch.

Therefore, while I’m here on the cement crying about how my downloaded record did me wrong, I might as well give it a fair shake, because in all seriousness, it’s not a bad set of tunes. Actually, there are a couple that are downright as good as “Rocket” even if they aren’t as immediately satisfying. Specifically the one-two punch of the rigid yet bouncy (and also aptly titled for more musical adjective fun) “Shiny And Warm” and the subsequent “I Wanna Life”, which is as close to catchy as the band gets again by the album’s end, is a delightful surprise after the dreary and sleepy “Dreaming” and the sluggish, almost pulse-less poor excuse for a dance-pop song “Hunt”. To top it all off, even though it’s not groundbreaking, the closing track “Voicething” is a minor pleasure of experimental pop music, letting Ms. Goldfrapp do what she does best and ululate through a flower field of Will Gregory’s bursting beats and bubbly melodies.

When all’s said and done, yes, I might have been able to appreciate Head First much more had I not heard “Rocket” so much in advance of the album’s recent release, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time. Who knows, maybe as time goes on I’ll be able to forgive myself for the atrocious anticipatory mistake and grow to love the album (I guess that’s what those OMDs are for, right?) but right now I’ll continue to tread with trepidation through future listenings of these other songs, and save “Rocket” for times when I need to remind myself that this duo is capable of astounding things, even when they’re not able to catch lightning in a bottle more than once per album anymore.

Rating: 74%