Going solo's a struggle with this difficult second album

Alison Goldfrapp's aptly titled ‘Flux’ shows her trouble trying to move on from earlier work, as she floats in dreamy pop that lacks her old-school freakiness

- By Helen Brown

“I wanna live as a fantasy,” sighs Alison Goldfrapp on “Find Xanadu”, the lead single from her second album, Flux. Her vaporous vocal coats the electro-pop pulse with a fine mist of her trademark sexy shimmer. At times, the airy diffusion of these 10 new songs has the power to make the listener similarly, blissfully weightless. But at others, the melodies and meanings seem to evaporate in the mid-tempo mizzle.

Interviewed for the release of her solo debut, The Love Invention (2023), Goldfrapp said she'd taken a break from working with her bandmate Will Gregory because their partnership had become “too comfortable and familiar”. She wanted to challenge herself with something new. That's all well and good, but it's disconcerting that she has (so far) sounded less in control of her solo work than she does on the joint venture.

Although both the solid, retro stylings of The Love Invention and the more delicately dreamy