What happens when masters of pop take a dip in the fringe? It's easy enough to parse the motivation behind the unabashed avant garde, or at least the work of artists who begin, remain within, and ultimately end in the avant garde. It's another matter entirely to put a bead on artists who weave in and out of strange territory. This is the story of Goldfrapp, an electronic music duo consisting of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory.

Goldfrapp is best known for their pair of fun, sexy club albums Black Cherry and Supernature. Excellent though they are, it's no secret why these albums charted so well. Given the support of ad campaigns, top-notch full albums beyond the singles and a great live show, Black Cherry and Supernature are Respectable Pop 101. While I highly encourage everyone to jump into these two discs if they haven't already, my concern today is for the two albums on either end of this front-facing pop period.

In 2000, Goldfrapp released their debut album Felt Mountain. While it didn't exactly bomb, digging well into the UK Top 100, it fell significantly short of its Platinum-selling successors. But Felt Mountain wasn't even the same species as Black Cherry and Supernature. It sounds like a 21st century cabaret half the time and a surreal fantasy soundtrack the other half. It's music best described as "interesting", much like an unusual texture or flavor in foreign food is "interesting". It's not so much that it's overtly good or bad, just that it's so competently different that it holds a listener's attention without being all that catchy. This isn't music built on hooks and dance floor beats, but it's also not egregiously "experimental" noise.

After spending more than half the decade being marketed as a sexy sex symbol of sex, Alison Goldfrapp decided to change up her routine. She altered her image to be more androgynous and artsy, drawing on pagan themes, of all things, for her inspiration. Taking close to two years to record and departing significantly from the style that made them famous, Goldfrapp released Seventh Tree in 2008. While not nearly as weird as Felt Mountain, it's still conspicuously free of any "Strict Machine" or "Train"-like tracks. Instead, Seventh Tree produced a minor hit in the form of "A&E". The entire album is strangely organic, using far fewer synth-and-tweak tricks. Even Alison Goldfrapp's voice is less weighed down by effects.

With each successive single release from Seventh Tree, the chart position dropped. "A&E" topped out at #10 in the UK with very little play stateside and by the time "Caravan Girl" came around it couldn't even break #50. Goldfrapp, as a group, didn't come to pop success by accident, but they also never intended to stay there. The cynic in me, supported by the chart figures, says that Seventh Tree's success has as much or more to do with the goodwill garnered from the duo's two previous albums as it does with the warmth and excellence of Seventh Tree itself. From a purely artistic standpoint, though, I'm more interested to hear what Goldfrapp comes up with on their next album than I would be if they had recorded four good but selfsame albums of club pop.