NVinNYC

I was lucky enough to catch Goldfrapp (↪iTMS) at their only stateside event last year at the Nokia Theatre on December 5th.

Before I even got in the door to the show, I was offered a little (about 2 cm diameter) black button with the band’s name in green. It was kind of a nice way to start off the evening, and a cool thing for a band to do for their fans to help word of mouth (stickers do the same thing, but I’m never sure where I should put them). Sadly once I got in I realized that this was the only Goldfrapp merchandise I was going to get: they weren’t selling anything inside (there wasn’t even a table set up). This was a little disappointing since I’d love a well designed Goldfrapp shirt, I can only guess that they didn’t want to drag all their merchandise halfway across the world for just one show in NYC.

I didn’t know that the show was sold out, so I was lucky that I arrived early enough to stake out a spot on the railing overlooking the front pit. After a bad experience with the pit at an earlier concert, I decided to avoid it this time. One problem I had at the previous concert was that the sound was poorly balanced to the point where the bass was a bit too loud but the vocals were near impossible to hear. While waiting for the concert to start, I was worried this would still be the case because someone in sound booth had left the bass up way too loud on the pre-show background music. Fortunately this was fixed before the show started, but I still would be hesitant to recommend standing in the front for any concert at the Nokia Theatre for this reason.

One thing that surprised me as I was doing some people watching before the show started was the composition of the crowd, which was mostly people in their 30s or late 20s: I was probably one of the younger people there. There was also a large number of gay couples at the show, which I guess makes sense considering electroclash nature and roots of Goldfrapp’s music.

Anyway, the show eventually started, without an opener (tough they had never announced one), and they went right into Train with full-on craziness. Perhaps you’re wondering what exactly constitutes FoC, well allow me to explain. First of all, let me describe the outfits of some of the performers. Imagine black tank top shirt (that dips low under the neck), but instead of being sleeveless, like most shirts of this type, this one has big poofy & ruffled sleeves like you might find on a old-fashioned ball gown and was worn by the (muscular male) drummer of the band. Meanwhile the female keyboard player had on a similar outfit except hers was covered in sparkly sequins. The guy manning the guitar (and more synths) really took it to the next level though. This guy, who sports long hair with full compliment of facial hair (beard & stash) and is probably about 6 feet tall. He was basically wearing a giant shiny white bag for the concert along with big white lace-up platform and heel boots that probably added at least 8 inches to his height. Amazingly ridiculous… Alison looked the most normal of the bunch wearing a tight black jumpsuit and black heels, but I was surprised to see her with straightened hair as I was used to seeing it curly as on the cover of Black Cherry. You can see the people I was mentioned in this little backstage video (bagman is the one wearing shiny underoos).

Anyway, the FoC doesn’t end with the outfits though. For the opening song they had full lights and strobes going and wolf dancers. To be clear about the wolf dancers I’m talking about two women with very expressive snarling wolf masks on stalking around the stage and menacingly dancing to the music. Oh yeah, and besides the masks, what were they wearing? Metallic brown bikinis. See but it’s okay because they’re from the UK.

The final stroke of FoC came at the end of the song when Alison began dry-humping a Theremin. Again, they’re from the UK so maybe that’s standard operating procedure over there.

The concert continued after that and remained awesome throughout. Alison was amazing to watch live (because she really hits all the crazy notes just like they are on the records) and the band basically belted out a whole bunch of songs: it was more of a shut up and play performance with only short breaks between songs rather than lots of waiting, tuning, or joking around. The dancers returned for four more songs throughout the set sporting a variety of costumes such as pearly white body-suits and horse outfits complete with tails and masks that looked similar in appearance to gigantic white rooks with broken mirrors glued all over them. Goldfrapp played a large variety of stuff from all their albums including their newest album Supernature which all sounded awesome and overall the concert was simply amazing because of the barrage of amazing sound.

After the concert, there were people passing out nice coaster-sized promotional cards advertising the new album, which will be available here in the states in a few weeks (on March 7th). Which leads me to my next point: the UK release date for Supernature was August 22nd, 2005! NME called it “The Best Pop Album of 2005″ (I’m reading from the card here). Yet over on this side of the Atlantic, we have to wait half a year more to get it. What the Fuck!?!

Thankfully there are a few things that can help suppress the infection of this horrible wound. First of all there is the Number 1 EP (↪iTMS) that mentioned in a previous post. Next up is the video for Ride a White Horse, which was just released as the third single for the album in the UK. It’s more messed up than the video for Number 1, to the point where I’m not sure if I even like it, so enjoy!

Finally, there’s the album itself which is due in a few weeks. I guess that Mute (the US label) decided that they had screwed American customers enough and decided to throw in a bonus DVD with a whole bunch of nice looking extras. Check it out on Amazon. Must… pre-order… now…

Update (2/21/06): Oh La La is the iTunes Free Download of the week! It’s the third single on Supernature (released after Number 1 but before Ride a White Horse I think). It’s an awesome track, but I’m trying to decide if it’s a good thing that it’s featured on iTunes like this or not… Anyway, grab it while it’s fresh (or free).