Pitchfork

So I do half-go for it, from that first rush of ice to the veins to the dots of old-model cabaret spook that crop up later, and from there through the buzz and pulse of the inbetween. Witchy English vibes, analog synth surgery, superhuman icy-vulnerable vocals, and production that sounds alternately like high-polish chrome and a sucking black hole: What more do I usually ask for?

Well, something, obviously, because somewhere along the line I lose it. Maybe it's the part where Alison wants to "ride on a white horse," though I suppose there's both a half-decent hero/heroin joke and a T. Rex reference in there. Maybe it's the part where I remember that I have Gary Numan and Siouxsie albums I still haven't listened to it enough. Or maybe it's just the peculiar plaint of the electro dance-pop full-length: the sound of those mid-tempo album-completing tracks. They're effortlessly organized, full of so much dense trebly shimmer and helium swooning and sighing that you actually zone out and stop hearing them, right up until you realize your ears hurt a little from taking it all in. They're loads of effort poured into a product that winds up sounding like nothing in particular, immaculate synth arrangements not quite making up for the fact that the song will neither bang and swell nor relax into a dreamy lull. If Alison were Kylie, she could at least spice things up by switching modes-- sunny here, earnest here, then back to machine-tooled intimidation. Alison, being Alison, has to stay all witchy all the time.

And there's the non-shocker: This is sure to sound better in the variegated sweep of a good DJ mix-- something that's not, given the present currency of "electro-house," so difficult to come across. The bangers here will sound fab on the pop ends of said mixes, "Ooh La La" owning all. The tracks that lapse back into Goldfrapp's old Felt Mountain electronic-chanteuse mold will sound fine in your apartment. ("U Never Know" and "Let it Take You" make a gorgeous break from the ultra-dense buzz, getting progressively softer, silkier, and more minimal.) But plenty of these tracks keep feeling like exercises: too thick and melodic to work like dance music, but with melodies that refuse to stick as satisfyingly as pop.

Which makes this pretty much what you'd expect: the prime-time flagship of glammy electroid dancefloor pop, curiously expensive-sounding and accessible to all, but strangely stripped of the functionalism of the dance record and the full thrills of pop. Sometimes that lands it in the sweet spot. Just as often, though, it seems to have forgotten what in the world it was meant to offer in the first place.