Rock and Pop: iTUNES FESTIVAL 2010 - Goldfrapp and Marina and the Diamonds
Published: 29 July 2010
by ALAN STAFFORD
POP music isn’t dead, it’s just been sleeping – and this evening proved it.
First up, Marina Diamandis, AKA Marina and the Diamonds, currently leading the race to be Indie Disco Princess 2010.
Her songs are pure pop, but actually with some imagination and variety.
Some say Marina tries too hard at “quirky” but they are wrong and should be locked in a cell and forced to listen to Rachel Stevens.
This is a singer with her own mind and voice, and that is cause for celebration.
Best are a heartfelt I Am Not A Robot and a stomping Mowgli’s Road, which sounds like Bat For Lashes with all the seriousness taken out.
Things get even better when Goldfrapp arrive onstage, walking through a billowing archway which looks remarkably like the end of a gigantic fallopian tube.
This is one of their first shows for two years but glittering black-clad sprite Alison Goldfrapp has lost none of her unworldly allure, and the band’s electronic sound is bold, brazen and at times bewitching.
Recent album Head First lives and breathes 80s synth pop (the keyboards in Rocket sound almost like an echo of Van Halen’s Jump), and is a shift in mood from 2008’s folky Seventh Tree.
But new songs such as Believer and Alive still sit well alongside older hits from Supernature and Black Cherry like Number 1 and the glam-stomp of set-closer Ooh La La, which nearly brings the Roundhouse roof down.
Two encores are matched with two different outfits, and a deliciously dark Strict Machine finally brings the night to an end.
Perhaps most remarkably of all, Goldfrapp even pull off the feat of having two keytar players without looking ridiculous.
All in all, an excellent return to form.