The Love Invention

Alison Goldfrapp

Released on 12/5/23 by Skint Records
Main artists: Alison Goldfrapp
Genre: Electronic

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Alison Goldfrapp's voice, songwriting, and very name are so intertwined with her wide-ranging body of work with Will Gregory as Goldfrapp that it makes establishing her identity as a solo artist uniquely difficult. Fortunately, her first album on her own proves she's up to the challenge. Instead of striving to make a deeply serious set of songs -- as many bandmembers do when they go solo -- on The Love Invention, she offers her listeners a chance to dance their cares away with some of the most direct and euphoric music of her career. The record's ecstatic grooves celebrate her musical roots and dance music itself as much as any relationship. Disco has always been a vital element of Alison Goldfrapp's work, and it provides some of The Love Invention's most glittering highlights: "Gatto Gelato" is a saucy, Italo disco-flavored standout, while "The Beat Divine" takes a cosmic, slow-motion approach that's so hazily sensual, it seems to have its own fog machine. On "Fever," a four-on-the-floor house beat brings the track -- and the album -- to a pulsing peak. Though the styles and influences may be familiar, Alison Goldfrapp takes distinctly different vantage points on them here than she does with Goldfrapp. Neither as dramatic nor as animated as the extremes of her work with Gregory, The Love Invention casts a consistently transporting spell of rejuvenation and seduction on songs like the Claptone collaboration "Digging Deeper Now," where Alison Goldfrapp sighs "Your colors/Breathe life back into me" over a swelling synth bass. Despite contributions from producers that also include Richard X, Paul Woolford, and James Greenwood, the whole album flows as smoothly as an artfully mixed DJ set. Of course, a passing resemblance to Goldfrapp's work is inevitable. Some of The Love Invention's sleekly linear tracks, such as "NeverStop," could almost pass for dance remixes of the duo's songs. Hints of Supernature's and Head First's elated dance and synth pop make themselves known, most notably on "In Electric Blue," a radiant ballad that recalls "Number One" as well as Alison Goldfrapp's larger talent for grounding her sonic fantasies in real feeling. Similarly, she transforms the prosaic into the magical on the album's sparkling title track, which was partly inspired by her use of hormone replacement therapy for menopause. On "So Hard So Hot," she fuels its Donna Summer-esque disco inferno with climate change fears. As The Love Invention unfolds, she changes things up while upholding the album's gliding flow, adding narrative drama with "Hotel"'s tale of fleeting passions and balancing "Subterfuge"'s ethereal tones with trap-inspired beats. Goldfrapp's mix of everything and anything is a large part of the duo's charm, but the way Alison Goldfrapp focuses on her legacy as a dance and pop music innovator on The Love Invention feels just as authentic. Her respect for the power of the groove results in one of her most cohesive projects, and one that makes the dance floor that much classier with its presence.

© Heather Phares /TiVo

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The Love Invention

Alison Goldfrapp

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