Album Review: Goldfrapp - Silver Eye

Each new Goldfrapp album comes with the brand name's ongoing riddles.

The creative balance between producer Will Gregory and the eponymous Alison is obviously not just puppeteer versus pretty voice to deliver the songs — but you're still not sure where the lines intersect. Further, you're never quite certain where the music itself is going to go, as they veer from their initial glam electro of the shiny and danceable Felt Mountain, to the (maybe not quite convincing) folk-tronica on their previous, Tales Of Us.

Silver Eye brings back some of the stomp, but conversely keeps some of the tension between nature and technology in its style and subject matter. Opener Anymore adds an almost Garbage-ish snarl to Alison's voice, which pulls back for the following Systemagic where programmed beds have a real lushness. Then there's the angles of Beast That Never Was, where she trills over an ominous buzz.

It's also the first Goldfrapp album where they've bought in outsiders to truly collaborate, but even these seem the right ones: Eno sideman Leo Abrahams and St Vincent producer John Congleton among them.

It all makes for a quite beautiful machine, but with Goldfrapp, it might be like the song says: Everything Is Never Enough.