Alison Goldfrapp never really left, but thanks for the welcome anyway. “Did I go away?” she asks with that subtle British lilt, half-curious, half-unbothered. “We toured for like a year and a half after the last album. Had a teeny-weeny little break. But yeah, sure—welcome back.”
That’s kind of the Goldfrapp way. Never gone, just reinvented. Again. The new era—born of electronic-only production and a video full of androgynous cyborg fantasy—is a sharp veer from 2013’s Tales of Us, an album so delicate it practically wept onto your record shelf.
This time? “No acoustic drums, no acoustic guitars, no strings,” she says. “We started with some acoustic instruments, but then just said—no. Let’s strip it all away.” No safety nets, no nostalgia. Just synths, guts, and whatever mood strikes.
It wasn’t a calculated flip, but it does follow a pattern. “It’s like we subconsciously rebel against the last thing we did,” she admits. “We don’t want to repeat ourselves, and we’re not interested in a formula. That seems kind of...pointless.”
That refusal to settle is why “Anymore,” the album’s first single, pulses like a night drive through neon static. “It’s really simple,” she says with a laugh. “Three chords. I wanted to put more space in the music. In the past, there were so many layers. This time I thought, let’s make it breath a bit. Let’s be raw.”
And then there’s the video—a striking, stylized affair that’s already sparked headlines with one word: androgyny. “I suppose that word’s been thrown around a lot,” she shrugs. “But yeah, I’ve always been drawn to people who blur the lines. Bowie. Prince. Joan Jett. I had a crush on a Spanish girl in school, then Marc Bolan, then Prince. Always loved that kind of aesthetic.”
She talks about beauty in bold terms—admiring women who shave their heads, loving things that are “beautiful in a brutal way.” Her influences spill across the decades and into film. “The Holy Mountain,” she says, name-dropping Alejandro Jodorowsky’s fever dream. “It’s so strong and striking. There’s just something about it.”
Goldfrapp’s vision, like her music, is rarely tidy. It doesn’t care if it fits the moment. It just is. “There’s something tribal about simplicity,” she says. “It’s closer to punk rock than people might realize.”
As for what’s next? Please don’t ask. “I like the spontaneity of not really knowing what’s going to happen,” she says. “That’s the fun part.”
Listen to the interview above and check out the video to "Anymore" below.
