Album: Goldfrapp, ***

Black Cherry, Mute

Goldfrapp's debut album, Felt Mountain, was a slow-burner, opening quietly but notching up more than half a million sales, yet another instance of Mute's uncanny knack of invading the mainstream from the fringes. Black Cherry maintains the debut's air of dreamy widescreen glamour, but is a more propulsive, urban affair. The single "Train" is buzz-and-thump electroclash – it's monster riff could be the electronica equivalent of a Status Quo boogie. Set against the insistent machine-rock groove, Alison Goldfrapp's ice-queen ardour as she admits she "can't stop our love train" recalls Curve's Toni Halliday. The S&M intimations of "Strict Machine" sound like Kate Bush and Kraftwerk performing a pervy "Spirit in the Sky". The entire album seems to be about sex: with their breathless erotic whisperings set against shimmering strings and harpsichord, the cinematic "Deep Honey" and "Hairy Trees" are closest to the paradisiacal mood of Felt Mountain. But most of these 10 tracks rely on the disparity between Goldfrapp's vulnerable voice and forceful synth riffs – best effected on "Tiptoe", where the implacable electronic tread looms menacingly over her tiny intimacies. The plaintive frisson of the title track is accentuated by her shift to fragile soprano on the chorus, while her vampish croon and Will Gregory's twittering, burping synth lines lend a strange, subaquatic languor to "Crystalline Green".