Black Cherry

Black Cherry is the second studio album by English electronic music duo Goldfrapp, consisting producers Alison Goldfrapp (vocals, synthesizer) and Will Gregory (synthesizer). It marked a departure from the ambient sound of their debut album, Felt Mountain (2000), incorporating electronic dance and synthpop music and a lot more beats and rhythm.

About why they chose to move in this direction, Alison Goldfrapp said:

NewBeats: Was it at all daunting to start working on the new album?

Alison: […] I think we felt that we really didn’t want to repeat what we had done, you know that was really important to us, we kind of wanted to do something that felt equally as fresh to us as the first one felt fresh to us, and we wanted to put more kind of “oomph” in it.

NewBeats: Why was the change in sound important to you?

Alison: For me, I was started to feel a bit claustrophobic about the music we had made, the immaculate-ness of it, playing live, specifically I’m talking about. It had an immaculateness that I really liked, but at the same time playing that live got really intense. There were points that I really wanted to , you know, scream and hit something, let go a little bit and for me, and Will, we wanted to do this on this album and play more ourselves, just jamming more, be more improvised with it, which has been the best, you know the bit that has been the most fun on this album.

NewBeats:What lead to the “dancier” edge?

Alison: Well, quite a few things really. I mean I’ve always kind of been into disco and it was something I’d talked about when people asked us what inspired us on the first album, although I think the inspiration was much more subtle, sort of bedded in there. One of the things that I like about disco, old disco music, was all those lush string arrangements, that inspiration is much more obvious on “Black Cherry”.
You know, it was also touring for a year and a half, or however long we toured, I can’t even remember now, and just a sort of longing for a more rhythmical emphasis on the music and more bass and just a more physical, less cerebral and more physical feel to the music.

In an interview with Filter, Alison explained where she got the album title:

It came to me in a dream — just the words “Black Chery” in huge floating letters"

On NewBeats, Alison also elaborated on the album title:

NewBeats: Why the title Black Cherry?

Alison: Black Cherry… it’s a colour, it’s something that you can eat, and it sort of conjures up kind of dark, juicy, glossy images. It sort of reminds me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, you know, that big, glossy apple that she bites into and it could be a bit dangerous, seductive and also it reminds me of glitter and 70’s sort of camp, opulence and etc etc etc. So it just has all these multi-layers, I love things that have several kind of visual connotations to them. You know, something that works on lots of different levels."

In another interview, Alison explained the wolf imagery on the album (and its singles) artwork:

I’ve always been interested in the idea of metamorphosis. The mythology and the symbolism of animals is an ancient fascination. We’d like to be more animal-like, yet we want our animals to be more human. Wolves, to me, represent freedom and power, and in turn that represents sexuality – which is why we use them so much in the artwork."