A transcendent resurrection.
This is precisely the album Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory needed to return with after the ethereal yet bucolic Tales of Us — an album that was only truly appreciated by a niche audience. With Silver Eye, the band have taken a firm thundering stomp back into the electronica scene, crackling the industry with their brilliant energy and unrivaled production. Don't go in thinking this is the successor to Black Cherry or Supernature, because Silver Eye is a different kind of beast altogether. It plays with you, teases and dares you to really listen to the atmosphere presented in these ten tracks. The album really is a majestic intwetwining of fire and ice, representing the upbeat and drifting halves of the record, respectively. It isn't all stompers or in any way an attempt to beg for radio airplay — the band respects music as an entity, and treats this record as something more than worthy of being their seventh official studio album.
If you think "Anymore" is high-energy and the most explosive track on this album, you couldn't be more wrong. "Systemagic" is pretty much "Train" and "Tiptoe" if they overloaded on PCP and soared into the stratosphere. It's bombastic, slinky and my God, does it ever crackle and snap along the way. Other standouts include the luscious "Tigerman", complete with growling synths and gooey warm vocals by Alison, who is clearly aging more exquisitely than most wines. "Become the One" is a distorted bopper akin to "Shiny and Warm" from the duo's self-despised Head First (which had some gorgeous tracks such as "Dreaming" and "Hunt"). Closing out the album is the purely volcanic "Ocean", and quite honestly it may be one of the most powerful, visceral and human (no pun intended) Goldfrapp tracks since the tragically ignored "Let It Take You" from Supernature.
This album and band deserve your respect and time, not for whether the music appeals to you personally, but due to the fact that they maintained the infusion of their creative energy and personality without falling victim to commercialization or radio-friendliness. Alison and Will are only improving as time goes on as their journeys through life progress along with ours in this chaotic world, and it makes the music all the more powerful, deep and evocative. Silver Eye is, quite simply, a masterpiece. The band deserves to be given proper recognition as an incredible collective artistic force with a creative vision that few could come close to even producing a sliver of.
This is what music should be.