Glitchwatchers.

When Goldfrapp's first album, Felt Mountain, was released back in the fall of 2000, the duo of Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp stood out as something truly different. Their debut recording was a pastiche that ranged freely through a variety of samples, synth-sounds, moods and textures, all wrapped around Ms. Goldfrapp's piercing, smoky, remarkably sensual voice. No matter how languid the mood or sophisticated the orchestral touch, Felt Mountain was clearly pop music. Goldfrapp seemed a belated example of the kind of mass-audience crossover electronica artist critics had been clamoring for since at least 1997.

But that was way back when 'electronica' in some quarters still meant trip-hop. Since then we've had the revival?to the point of saturation?of the alternative pop music landscape with minimalist synth-pop?call it electro, electroclash, whatever you like. It's catchy, it's hip, and at this point it's perhaps a bit too much of a good thing. The bad news about Goldfrapp's new album, Black Cherry, is that it gestures in the direction of this ongoing trend. The good news is that Will and Alison are still pop songwriters and decidedly maximalist at heart. Those ubiquitous disco balls cast their reflections over some of the new songs here, like "Strict Machine" and "Twist," but there's always a lot more going on than the old bump and grind.

For example, Black Cherry's first single, "Train," is a shining example of the crossover sound that landed Goldfrapp on Conan O'Brien last time out. Is it rock, or is it electronica, or are such distinctions utterly useless (cf past Alison Goldfrapp collaborators Add N to X)? "Train" has a complex yet instantly catchy, shuffling beat and a perfect pop structure, with the notable exception of harmonies. It's a great single. Will Gregory explains: "There isn't any harmony on 'Twist' or 'Train' apart from the vocal harmonies. There's nothing that plays a chord. That was a thing for us, to maybe throw out some of that rather sugary harmony and drums." It's unlikely that listeners will mourn the (minimalist?) absence of chords while being beguiled with Alison's vocals, multitracked and adorned with effects (never too many, though) as they are on this new album.

And why shouldn't Goldfrapp have some fun? Black Cherry is supposed to be "a bit of a laugh," confided Gregory via phone from Europe, where Goldfrapp has been touring, playing shows at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and Universal Hall in Berlin. "We did have a bit of a jump around in the room to it, a few moments of hysteria. That's probably the spirit that some of it should be taken in." Tacitly, he admits the influence of simpler forms of electronica while describing his and Alison's music-making processes. "It's more useful, to just listen to stuff and say 'I like that bit, that simple bit, that moronic-ness, that electronic-ness.'" But Goldfrapp like to play around in the studio, and a disco-sounding track like "Strict Machine" actually incubated for some six months. "I won't even begin to go into the tortuous route that that one took." The results are good, danceable fun?albeit with a strong dose of irony. "Wonderful electric," Alison croons ethereally, and then: "I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love with a strict machine." Is she singing about her synth or??

The contrast between the bass-heavy synth-blurts of many of the songs on Black Cherry and Alison's pure, severe voice is striking. For that reason, some of the more dance-oriented tracks actually work better than the more meditative numbers. They have a drive, a kind of grotty charm, like an unwashed, unsavory, drug-addled looker on the dance floor. Not that this is necessarily what either Will or Alison is thinking about when they make the music. Will describes some of the images that inspired the songs: "In 'Twist' we talked about there being lots of spotty pubescent girls eating candy floss and throwing up. In 'Hairy Trees' there were a lot of strange little insects walking over carpets that took them three days to get across. They've nothing to do with how you should hear the music [got that?] but sometimes they jog you on to the next level."

Both songs are among the album's best. "Hairy Trees" is an excursion into lush, mellow, more orchestral textures and loping beats, reminiscent of Felt Mountain and topped off with particularly impressive, beautiful vocals. "Twist" is much heavier, more driving, a self-consciously club-influenced track complete with diva-like vocal drop-ins and beat breakdowns, but a listener can hear the girls swirling out of control on amusement park rides. For the record, Will says of the latter track that he thinks Alison "had the words pretty much complete, in essence before the music arrived?it was quick, it took us about a week."

Despite its forays into trendy disco territory, Black Cherry isn't a particularly calculated album. ("More Moroder than Morricone!" says the press release, and yes, that created apprehension, but much of it was unwarranted.) The music-making process Will Gregory describes has a large element of unconsciousness about it and is bound to pick up what's in the air, so to speak. "It's like bird watching or badger watching or something, you're sitting in the room pretending you're not writing a song, in the hopes that one will just pop out when you're not looking. Because it seems if you sit there with a net poised over it, it never appears? We quite often just put synths on and bang around and say we're going to do that for five minutes?and for example, the basslines on 'Tiptoe' [from the new album] are all accidental sorts of noises and farts that were just gotten through jamming and stitched together."

What has it been like performing the new material live? How might Goldfrapp fans be reacting to the new elements in their sound? "We've got a set list now where we go from "Deer Stomp," from the first album, into "Train." And that's quite a jump, but I think that it feels really good. And the audience gets it. So I think we really feel like we've grown."

On Black Cherry, Goldfrapp is still purveying a brand of electronic music that's cerebral and sexy, poppy, catchy and experimental all at once.