Seventh Tree

Product Information

Seventh Tree is the fourth studio album by English electronic music duo Goldfrapp, released on 22 February 2008 by Mute Records. Equally evident is that Goldfrapp and Gregory's songwriting powers have not been damaged in transit: opaque the sound may be, but the melody is beguilingly beautiful. Originally released in February 2008, Seventh Tree has been out of print for many years and will be reissued here as a yellow vinyl pressing with the original artwork by Alison Goldfrapp and Mat Maitland with photos by Serge Lebon, packaged in a gatefold sleeve and full colour inner sleeve with lyrics, an art print and exclusive to MuteBank an A1 poster as featured on the original pressing. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.

With its sweeping strings Cologne Cerrone Houdini has a slight Emmanuel flavour - all soft-focus erotic suggestion - and Happiness and Some People are further proof of the duo's growing songwriting genius and pop nous. Like the bulk of the album, there's a certain beauty in opener "Clowns", but it's an empty one-- more lullaby than pop song, it's symptomatic of what happens when you take all the grandeur out of big sweeping melodies. Opener, Clowns, captures both the eerie stillness and magic of nature, which counterpoints the subject matter of breast implants and surveillance magnificently.

John Murphy of musicOMH viewed it as Goldfrapp's "most subtle, affecting and rewarding album to date" and compared it to Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins. It can be upsetting to longtime fans, but often times the only real hurdle to these new directions is unfamiliarity-- just look at Goldfrapp, who startled their earliest fans by shifting from the surrealistic elegance of their 2000 orchestral-pop debut Felt Mountain to a beat-heavy mid-decade run at the dance charts. Adrien Begrand of PopMatters found that Seventh Tree "might be a quieter and more introspective disc than we'd been expecting, but this is still a quintessential Goldfrapp album with Gregory's arrangements brilliantly underscoring the inimitable vocal versatility of his female foil. Nothing if not pragmatic, Gryphon's members re-emerged as the Banned, purveyors of punk-friendly garage rock.

Alison's voice has never sounded better than on this album and the creativity of the music to accompany her voice is close to perfection. The album then slows down with a set of sadder, slower pieces that talk about loneliness and despair about broken relationships. It shimmers and shines with the warmth of a hazy summer, an electric whirlpool of sound over which Alison's glistening voice soars. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I've only recently discovered Goldfrapp and what I'm continually amazed by is their ability to make music I initially don't like and then it grows on me.And now I love them all - Clowns' ethereal, breathy, incoherent vocalisation accompanying clever sampling (they don't play guitars, you wouldn't know), the purity and simplicity of the lyrics to Some People and Road to Somewhere. The DVD contained music videos, behind-the-scenes footage and several live performances filmed at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea in June 2008. At AllMusic, Heather Phares praised the album's "electro hippie-chic" as the duo's "most polished and luxe work yet". It's a blissed out trippy LP of dreamy songs to listen to on the beach or floating on a boat down the river while smoking a doobie and watching the clouds in the sky drift by.