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| Artist: Goldfrapp
Label: EMI
Category: Music
List Price: £14.99
Buy New: £4.87
You Save: £10.12 (68%)
New (39) Used (9) Collectible (1) from £3.75
Rating:  72 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.4
EAN: 5099951830021
ASIN: B000ZN2582
Release Date: February 25, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Organic and challenging March 6, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
This feels like a brave album. Is it a return to Felt Mountain? I'm not so sure. It feels more pastoral and less forgiving than Goldfrapp's seminal first album.
Opener 'Clowns' lays down this approach. It drifts languidly over sparse musical instruments. Even Allison's voice seems to quiver and shake - free of any form of lyricism. 'Little Bird' eventually blossoms but still feels shrouded. Everything is a far cry from 'Black Cherry' and particularly 'Supernature'.
After a while though, the sparse nature of the recording beings to help the album. Songs begin to echo others in small ways and the strength of the songs as a cycle, as opposed to hearing them alone becomes more apparent. For me the album feels stronger in its latter half. Single 'A&E' is more driving than others and lyrically feels more rooted in a time and a place than some of the other songs. 'Caravan Girl' is unashamedly a pop moment, while 'Monster Love' is a strong closer.
I think this is an album I will continue to warm to; initially it feels like an effort in a way earlier Goldfrapp albums weren't. But Goldfrapp are to be commended for producing a more challenging album, that ultimately I think is more engaging than some of its predecessors.
 Seventh heaven March 6, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Wow! I thought Supernature took a lot of beating but this is its equal. It's also a total contrast: where Supernature was full-on and hedonistic, this is a quieter affair for the most part, a bit like thrashing yourself on Supernature's dancefloor before chilling out in Seventh Tree's chill room!
Everything that Goldfrapp and Gregory had before is still here. The perfect atmospheres of Felt Mountain, the sly decadence of Black Cherry, the depth of Supernature are all evident on Seventh Tree but with a more reflective, almost summery mood.
It's a brave decision to open your new album with a slow, quiet song like Clowns and the song draws you in. One of Goldfrapp's abilities is to totally change your perception of a song over time. Little Bird does this with its stunning "July...July...July" chorus before going into that shimmering Robin Guthrie guitar as does A & E when the drums kick in to take it onto a new level.
Other standouts for me: Cologne...with its intentional disco string line and Caravan Girl with its sumptuous chorus and dynamic arrangement. Almost anyone of these songs could be singles. Yes, it's really that good.
For those who think Goldfrapp have "lost it", "sold out" etc, you're wrong.
They're on top of their game and might just have released a classic. Brit award nominee? I'd stake good cash on it this time next year.
Seventh tree by goldfrapp March 5, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have all Goldfrapp's cds and this one excels them all.
It is so beautiful that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and what is more my husband and I have completely diverse tastes in music loves it too.
It is even more effective and affecting played on my ipod.
 Sorry... March 4, 2008
7 out of 23 found this review helpful
Got to go against the general concensus for this, nothing other than tired hagiography from young (sic) Alison. This follows the music industries economic trend of cloning whatever is popular and dredging it out into some kind of fashion movement, really depressing to hear something so plainly jumping on the folktronica bandwagon.
This record is probably quite well suited if you want to be down with the "kids", but in reality, it's just another pedestrian record for boring middle-aged people that like Coldplay. Still, it'll probably be massive - can't wait to see her with bones poking out of a leotard, yogacersing on the Chart show or some nonsense.
pap
 New Goldfrapp shampoo (5/10) March 4, 2008
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
I had high expectations for `Seventh Tree` given some of the pre-release hype suggesting - falsely it turns out - that Goldfrapp had returned to the more ethereal landscapes of their first, and best, album `Felt Mountain`. There had also been alot made of Goldfrapp's musical magpieism - a trait only to my knowledge achieved with any credibility by Daid Bowie - as she ditched the glam-rock-cum-disco kitsch of `Supernature` in favour of pastoral folk and rustic imagery. Comparisons were made to Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man's `Out of Season` and to the perennially influential Wicker Man soundtrack. This falsehood - presumably a marketing ruse compounded by the retro cover imagery - has been perpetuated by music press and customers alike as if no-one has actually listened to the album.
In fact, `Seventh Tree` sounds very little like this, but continues where some of the more saccharine, airy balladry on `Supernature` left off, more Cafe Del Mar than Nick Drake. Also bandied about quite liberally is the word "ethereal" - another cliche of music journalism - and the Cocteau Twins have been mentioned. Yes, `Seventh Tree` all but abandons the stomping euro-pop of the last album, but otherworldly this is not, unless you consider Air or Morcheeba otherworldly. The sad fact is that where Goldfrapp stood out as an exceptional talent in the largely vacuous and sterile genres of trip hop and chill out, they have run out of the very ideas that set them apart from the rest. The result is more the mood of a shampoo advert than the creepy folk suggested by the marketing machine.
Whereas `Seventh Tree` starts brightly with the agreeably bucolic atmosphere of `Clowns', which has Alison doing a bluesy, decadent vocal in the mold of Beth Gibbons or - dare I say it - Amy Winehouse. The climax of `Little Bird' revolves around some typically monstrous, chiming synths from Will Gregory, but there are not enough rough edges on the rest of the record to satisfy fans of their darker, more experimental output. Thereafter, it's all Kate Bush without the eccentricity, innocuous and schmaltzy, suitably inoffensive even to pleasure fans of Norah Jones or Dido. It resigns itself to background music and barely put up a fight to work its way back into the consciousness. That career making music for shampoo adverts beckons.
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