From the archives - Originally published October, 2000

While Alison Goldfrapp isn’t entirely unknown thanks to her magnificent work with Orbital and Tricky, her first autonomous release was and remains one of the best records of the past year. Her collaboration with Will Gregory has resulted in the release of Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain . This is a deeply moving, dark, magnificent, highly emotional and beautiful work that transcends many levels. It burrows into your head in ways that evoke a simpler time – when music and song-craft predominated over flashy production. What makes the album such a moving and intensely personal experience is that it evokes a lost world and time in the listener’s mind without falling into the predictable traps of schmaltz and that always annoying self-referential irony.

While a heavy debt to John Barry’s classic Bond themes and other 1960’s film soundtracks is evident,  Felt Mountain manages sound fresh and innovative.  It does this by mixing classic song structures and traditional styles with subtle electronic shading. The album is refreshing and experimental without feeling cold, distant or self-absorbed. The emotionally full and intimate aesthetic is about as far from the cool, detached IDM/Warp aesthetic and feels completely unaffected by trends and gimmicks, instead relying on emotionality in an almost pure, unspoiled state. When listening, you can feel the warmth and emotion that seeps right through your headphones and into your mind.  Felt Mountain stands out with it’s simplicity and purity in such a way to create a stark contrast to the processed products and superficial aesthetics that predominate in mainstream music.

The album is driven by Golfrapp’s incredible voice – alternately ethereal, haunting and textured in it’s dexterity, depth, sensuality and sheer emotional power. Complimented nicely by collaborator  Will Gregory’s strong musical arrangements, her voice is allowed the space to soar and dive, allowing her vocal power to predominate absolutely. The uncluttered string arrangements bring a lot of warmth to the album without overpowering the simplicity of the songs and arrangements. An unabashedly retro 1960s feel permeates the album, creating a dream-like suspension that lifts the listener into another world and another time. Atypically surprising pleasures abundant throughout the songs evoke a sense of loss and confusion. There is an under-running theme of nature vs. machine that permeates the lyrics, which means that the album works on many different levels, a complicated and somewhat dense experience. This is underlined by the album’s artwork that evokes natural, mountainous settings as seen through faded, sepia-toned pictures of mountains and snow-covered forests. A faded photo of a woman about to trek up towards a mountain seems to be the key image – giving a visual accompaniment that fits the albums’ themes.  It’s a contemplative and intimate record that wraps the ear in layers of sadness and a longings of unknown sadness while also creating an expansive dreamy outdoor atmosphere that is simple and uncluttered – it’s the contradictions that make the album mysterious and welcoming.

Lovely Head starts off with an eerie cry followed by mournful whistling, and the songs sets up the album’s overall feel on a wistful, sad note. Filled with sadness and melancholy, follows a seemingly maudlin path until a distorted, almost guitar riff wails over the lush strings, Ms. Goldfrapp’s voice is immediately evident in it’s power and presence – haunting lyrics point to a multi-layered duality that evokes lost loves, regret and yearning – the lyrics suggest something more underneath the surface. It’s dangerous to read too much into lyrics without much knowledge. Musically, the song sets the dreamy, yearning and wistful theme that flows throughout the album that feels refined, natural and somewhat relaxed. As the song ends, there is  whistling which adds to the melancholy atmosphere. You can feel the sadness reflected in the slow beat, combining with a sense of yearning and confusion – there are multiple layers and the song soars towards the end. An epic ballad that brings the listener right into the album.

Next up is Brown Paper Bag., which deepens the mood of the piece, with spare guitars shimmering over a much more intimate and noticeably sadder vocal. The ethereal voice is incredibly lush, as the strings swell through, you can sense the tears welling up she sings. A seemingly personal song, quite effective in it’s simplicity and unadorned feeling that sweeps through. You can hear a delicate balance almost framing a broken heart with the bittersweet atmosphere – the song also has the best line of the album “When you laugh, I’m inside… your mouth.” A deliberately dreamlike trip-hop pace is complimented by horn solos, and string arrangements, a very beautiful experience that slides through without seeming forced – the horn solo towards the end is quite evocative. The mix of  the strings and her sensual, emotional voice compliments each other perfectly while unfolding at a leisurely pace, leading into the next track.

Human starts off with an eerie, ominous string arrangement and quickly builds up momentum, quickly turning into a brassy, rather strident take on the Bond themes of Shirley Bassy (think the GoldFinger theme), though with the unique Goldfrapp atmosphere overlaying the track – there’s a bit of electronic chaos in parts that underlines the atmosphere. Human is the first track that really seems to delve into the man or machine motif, with it’s question : ‘are you human or a dud?’ which hangs in the air until the end of the song, when it takes a rather surprising turn, into a somewhat interesting statement that’s more surprising because it’s unexpected.  Ms. Goldfrapp’s voice on Human is aggressively strong and powerful, displaying quite a range from the subtle to the loud. Her singing is quite impressive in it’s versatility and is really what carries the album and only gets more impressive with multiple listening. This is an impressive track and one of the many memorable songs on the album. The interplay between her voice, electronic noise and the strings at the end is an exciting exercise in tension that underlines the disconnect and ambiguous meanings of the lyrics.

A much quieter and romantic ballad follows Human and comes in the form of the dreamy track Pilots. The weird distorted guitar makes another appearance in this track as well, but is more subtle here. The over-riding feel comes from the swelling strings and the chorus, her quieter romantic voice is evidenced here, mixing with the strings to create a sensual, dreamlike state. A kind of science fiction dream with it’s images of hovering cars and sunrises, it takes the listener into another dimension, flying through the skies, the a sensational track that soars into the atmosphere and is another example of the retro 1960’s feel. This is another track that reminds the listener of John Barry – with the 60’s and 70’s Bond movie love-song atmosphere almost perfectly replicated – though with a very slight undercurrent of electronic twinkling that gives it a contemporary feel. Pilots unfolds slowly and very beautifully it evokes a kind of innocence and sadness while her soaring voice at the end seems almost transcendent making the song feel almost perfect.

The album’s central track is the poignant Deer Stop, which is a stunning and unforgettable track that is the most emotional and moving track on the album. Starting off with a sad and slow pace, the track slowly builds, until the second verse, as her voice gradually gets more and more eerie as it goes along, the distortions make for an unsettling experience, full of confusion and fear.   It’s the most forthrightly electronic feeling track on Felt Mountain , with dissonant sounds and noises filling the background. Drifting in and out of comprehensible sounds, the song conveys a feeling of loss in an intriguing manner. I didn’t like this initially, but it grew on me with repeated listening – as you sense the emotional undercurrents behind the electronic distortions. Despite this, you can hear the emotion and desperation in her voice as it goes through distortion filters. It’s a stunning track that gains in intensity as it goes along, climaxing at the end in a powerful wail that sends shivers down my spine every single time I hear it. 

The title track, Felt Mountain , is surprisingly simple and cheery with simple yodeling melting into a simple wordless chorus of de-de-de-dah-dah giving the song an evocative feel and atmosphere. With it’s lack of lyrics giving it an almost instrumental feel, the song feels like calmly walking through a trail while singing aimlessly, as the strings and organ playfully dance with each other under her whistling and singing makes for a reassuring and relaxed feel. Felt Mountain is a nice contrast to the tormented love songs of the rest of the album and is set perfectly within the context of the other songs. What’s most appealing, is that for a mildly disorienting middle,  It’s simple construction and melody, make for a pleasantly low-key song. It’s unpretentious feel fits in perfectly with the low-tech, analog feel that predominates the rest of the record.

Oompah Radar is the oddest, yet most interesting track on the album. It starts off with a completely jarring and strange chorus of 1960’s synths and tinker toy sound effects, which is nice in an Austin Powers sort of way, but then the horns come in and she starts singing in them, which saves the track. This is one of the best parts of the album, it’s wordless and simple as well, then the organ begins grinding again, and the track climaxes at the end with a cacophony of keyboards and sound effects which fades out and fades in again. It’s sort of trippy in that way. While it’s pretty cool in that regard, Oompah Radar feels strange next to the other songs.  While it’s hard to know what to think because  it doesn’t fit the rest of the album, it does make a nice change of pace and can be funny depending on what kind of mood you’re in.

The next track is Utopia which is one of the most memorable tracks on the album. It’s starts of slow, with it’s lyrics suggesting that Goldfrapp has taken on a kind of immortal goddess persona, then the track takes off and soars into an incredible chorus. The words are incredibly interesting and it’s difficult to describe how such an absurd concept makes sense, but in the dreamy, subconscious atmosphere of the rest of Felt Mountain , this track gives the listener a lift thanks to it’s upbeat and pop-song feel. Allison Goldfrapp’s versatility is once again on display, as the track starts with a  her subtle, dreamlike vocal and soars once again at the end as the song explodes in waves of analog synths and melodic hooks which circle around. Utopia is a very powerful and emotional track that is quite beautiful in melody and purpose.

Felt Mountain finishes on a somber note with the mysterious and rather cloaked track, Horse Tears. It’s another showcase for her versatility, as her vocal starts out very sad then builds into a powerful wail and then breaks down into a sadder chorus that floats underneath some subtle phases and effects then builds up once again. The tension between these elements makes for an arresting and chilling track, which has the feel of a lonely night spent awake in the darkness – as slow piano moves underneath and violins come in, completing the story or themes of the album. It ties together nicely with the rest of the album and also makes a somewhat ambiguous end to the album, that creates an excellent mood. Its seems to be a regretful look back on something that seems to be lost. This is another stunning track on an album which has so many – it’s melancholy, almost trip-hop feel makes this once again, feel like a dream, albeit a sad one as it sleepwalks through many different emotions.  Horse Tears makes a perfect end-point to the album as it seems to sum-up both the emotions and music of the album, to distill the entire album as it slowly fades away under a chorus of mournful strings and distortions.

It’s easy to overlook something like Felt Mountain as the structure, style and whole approach of the album seems almost to be an anachronism these days. It does feel out-of-sorts these days, but the displacement it causes allows different expectations. What can only be described as an intimate, sensual, dreamy and overall revelatory experience awaits those who make the journey to listen to the album.  You cannot help but to admire the craft and care that went into the music with it’s mixture of classic structure and adventurous elements, it’s one of the more striking and charged albums of recent memory. A true measure of an album’s worth is how it stands up on repeated listening and this is one of those records that only grows more enjoyable as you listen more. This is mostly due to the texture and nuance of the singing and vocals, which are incredible. Allison Goldfrapp’s talent and power as a singer cannot be emphasized or complimented enough – she’s had one of the most intensely unforgettable voices of the past decade and Felt Mountain allows her versatility to shine throughout. The songs on Felt Mountain are a perfect vehicle to allow her talent to shine through. The combination makes this album one of the most unforgettable and moving records of recent times.

- Michael Palisano