Goldfrapp @ Royal Festival Hall

Last night saw the end of what I believe to be the longest period of my adult life without seeing any live music. Originally scheduled for the end of the first week of lockdown 2020, the gig celebrating the 20th (now 22nd) anniversary of Goldfrapp's debut album "Felt Mountain" finally happened.

I've seen Goldfrapp enough times now that I can no longer remember how many times I've seen them. One thing I do remember the first time I saw them was drinking expensive beer that tasted of socks. A combination of being older and the fact "Felt Mountain" was a downtempo album meant I decided against drinking beer, so no rant about the rip off beer prices.

As this is the longest I've ever waited for a gig it's probably the one I've given the most thought to prior to it happening. I had this vision of Alison Goldfrapp walking onto the stage with "Lovely Head" the opening track to "Felt Mountain" playing.

That never happened though, the tunes played were not in the order of the album and "Lovely Head" was in fact the last tune they did prior to the encore.

I own every Goldfrapp album and have listened to them all enough times to know them pretty well. What became apparent last night though is that whilst I recognised the tunes, I'd forgotten what many of them were called.

Alison was probably the most talkative I've ever seen her on stage. She normally has very little to say between the songs, but last night she was engaging with the audience asking how far people had travelled to go to the gig. When someone shouted out "Peckham" she asked what bus did they get, which was quite amusing.

In the encore they did a trio of some of the bigger tunes in "Ride A White Horse", "Strict Machine" and "Train". OK I haven't completely forgotten the names. Being more uplifting numbers, we all got off our seats for the first time. A shame it ended after that, but hopefully the latter two were a warm up to a 20th anniversary gig of "Black Cherry" next year. 

Goldfrapp @ Brixton Academy

Only 8 months had passed since I last saw Goldfrapp, but the main difference between last nights gig at Brixton Academy and the one earlier on in the year at the Roundhouse was that the previous gig came before the new album and last nights gig came 8 months or so after the new album got released. Therefore I knew every tune they played last night rather than just the old ones.


It began with a couple of new tracks, the second being "Anymore" which I feel is becoming a future classic and won't be surprised to hear it in many Goldfrapp gigs in ten years time. With many acts I go and see these days they play an older more familiar track third and last night was no exception with them playing "Train".


We then had a mixture of tunes from the new album and from the "Supernature" album which lead onto the more familiar number in "Number 1", "Ride a White Horse" and "Ooh La La". Whilst the "Supernature" tracks inevitably got the better reactions, the tunes on the new album did blend in quite nicely. This is unlike their previous effort "Tales of Us" where you would have a gig of two halves, the new and the old.


The encore brought us "Black Cherry", new album track "Systemagic" and "Strict Machine". So despite having seven albums to pick from, only 3 albums actually featured.


There were fears this gig may not go ahead as the Birmingham gig earlier this week was cancelled for health reasons, but fortunately it did go ahead and they delivered as always. The only negative I have was the ridiculous £5.60 for a pint at Brixton Academy, nothing Goldfrapp could do about it I know, but it really annoys me that gig venues continue to rip us off like that.

Goldfrapp @ The Roundhouse

Being on the Goldfrapp mailing list, I was given the opportunity to purchase pre sale tickets for last nights gig at the Roundhouse. When the presale tickets went on sale however, they were sold pretty much instantly so I had to go through the official sale where I managed to get tickets despite them selling out quickly too.

Whilst I always encounter ticket touts on my way to a gig venue, there seemed to be more of them than normal last time. Taking a look around the venue when Goldfrapp came on stage, whilst it wasn't exactly empty it clearly didn't look sold out, something really needs to be done about ticket touts but I'll save that rant for another time.

Goldfrapp have a new album coming out on Friday so inevitably there would be tunes I didn't know that would be played. I'll be honest, I wasn't a fan of their last album "Tales Of Us" but was such a fan of their previous five albums that I still went to see them back in 2013 when it came out.

The set began with "Utopia" followed by "Lovely Head" from their debut album "Felt Mountain". Then came the first of their new material "Anymore". Was definitely an improvement on their last offering having more of an electronic sound.

After hearing a few more old and new tracks I was quite surprised to hear them play "Dreaming" from their "Head First" album. I read somewhere that Goldfrapp themselves were not too keen on the "Head First" album so either they changed their mind or that article was a load of nonsense. Anyhow I am a fan of that album so all was good.

After a few more new tracks Alison seemed almost apologetic about playing the new material, saying she knows it can be difficult listening to something you've never heard before. There was a time when the likes of "Utopia" was new to me so definitely no bad thing there. What I can say is I think I'll enjoy the new album more than their last one and time will tell if it turns out better than the others.

Then came the anthems starting with "Number One" followed by "Ride A White Horse". At this point it wasn't even 10pm and they left the stage, but thought maybe it's an extended encore. They came back out and played "Black Cherry" then "Shiny and Warm", another track from the "Head First" album. Then came "Ooh La La" and I was thinking the only big number they were yet to do was "Strict Machine" which is what they did next and that was the end. Being a Monday though, the early finish perhaps wasn't such a bad thing.

So the new material sounds promising, the old tunes as good as ever and nothing from the "Tales of Us" album was played so the gig was as good as can be expected.