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 Caught in the Carousel - Music Reviews and More
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Goldfrapp
Seventh Tree
Mute
Tree One: Loved Felt Mountain. Last song I hear on the
night of September 10, 2001, is "Deer Stop." In less than
12 hours life would make that song even more haunting. If it weren't
for Leonard Cohen's Ten New Songs you would have gotten my vote
for Album of the Year.
Tree Two: Nice work singing back up on Bryan Ferry's song "San
Simeon." Kate Bush might be worried.
Tree Three: Sophomore album Black Cherry hits with a thud.
Even album cover is a disaster. A few years later you are rescued by
Supernatural (album, and album cover) and that Target ad.
Tree Four: Great that you made the "W" hotel sampler
CD with "Ooh La La." That should be seen as a treat and not
a goal. (And who buys those anyway? Isn't the room expensive enough?)
Tree Five: It is late 2005 and I am listening to Kate Bush's
Aerial and I am wishing I could be there for the "Oh shit"
look that must be spreading all across Tori Amos' I'm done face.
But what of your faces, Alison Goldfrapp? Will Gregory? Do you hear
in that masterpiece a challenge or a death knell?
Tree Six: Seventh Tree is released. Pirate outfit seems
a year late. Rumors of a stripped-down sound. This is not a great mix
on minor pieces like "Little Bird" and "Some People."
Better left to Aimee Mann or maybe late-career Annie Lennox. But . .
.the song "Clowns" astonishes; "Cologne Cerrone Houdini"
is just waiting for the right Bond film to grace, and "Road to
Somewhere," "Happiness" and "A&E" are hauntingly
pastoral and pitch perfect.
Tree Seven: Somewhere in the English countryside, Kate Bush smiles
and invites her friends over, and without an ounce of jealousy or schadenfreude,
just a "you've got to hear this," she lies down in fields
of hay, humming her way into crepuscular ecstasy.
I watch all of this from a distance with my pirate spyglass. Don't tell anyone.
--Thomas Cooney
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