Alison Goldfrapp: Flux review – Melody and meaning evaporate in mid-tempo mizzle

“I wanna live as a fantasy,” sighs Alison Goldfrapp on “Find Xanadu”, the lead single from her second album, Flux. Her vaporous vocal coats the electro-pop pulse with a fine mist of her trademark sexy shimmer. At times, the airy diffusion of these 10 new songs has the power to make the listener similarly, blissfully weightless. But at others, the melodies and meanings seem to evaporate in the mid-tempo mizzle.

Interviewed for the release of her solo debut,The Love Invention (2023), Goldfrapp said she’d taken a break from working with her bandmate Will Gregory because their partnership had become “too comfortable and familiar”. She wanted to challenge herself with something new. That’s all well and good, but it’s disconcerting that she has (so far) sounded less in control of her solo work than she does on the joint venture. Although both the solid, retro stylings of The Love Invention and the more delicately dreamy Flux contain some lovely melodies and beautifully detailed production, the woman herself seems less edgily present than she while haunting 2000’s “Lovely Head” or on 2003’s “Strict Machine”. Despite all her S&M stage theatrics, it does leave you wondering if Gregory’s the kinky one after all.

Which is not to say that the vanilla breeze of Flux doesn’t yield its own sweet and subtle – if less distinctive – pleasures. Proggy synths weave in and out of the strobed rhythms, lending the sound a gentle, yearning, sci-fi glow, like the muted throb of ET’s heart. A pang of melancholy underpins opener “Hey Hi Hello”, which carries a gossamer echo of “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” (1981) by fellow S&M hymners Soft Cell. It’s a regretful breakup song for a love that doesn’t “make sense anymore”. A tumbling vocal line is reflected by a proggy synth, like neon on a wet pavement.

“Finding Xanadu” blows kisses back to the Eighties in a tune-quote from Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”. The duller plod of “Sound & Light” is one of several songs to find the singer looking up at the sky – on this occasion to find “emerald ribbons unfolding”. The greater static charge of “Ultrasky” sees her heart opened by the rain. “Cinnamon Light” evokes a summer haze.

When she was a child, Goldfrapp’s father used to take her out into the English countryside at night and encourage her to listen for the tiny sounds that other people missed. You can still hear her finding the magic of nature on tracks such as “Strange Things Happen”, over which she swoops like a bat up into her higher range – one-part Donna Summer to two-parts Kate Bush – to evoke a magical romance. “Ordinary Day” urges us to find wonder in the mundane. I struggled to locate it, though, in the bump-and-grind club beat of the more Ibiza-fied “Play It (Shine Like a Nova Star)”, on which her vocodered voice is lost and crushed in an overcrowded mix.

The only true standout is “Reverberotic”, which finds Goldfrapp getting a little of her old-school freak on. Notes melt and return to form at her whim as she twiddles the knobs. It’s no “Oh La La”, but there’s fun to be had with lava lamp lyrics like: “Lunar goo / I want to bathe in you.” It still could have used a little of Madonna’s wink’n’twerk in the delivery. This time around, Goldfrapp’s too much the ethereal girl.