It was the best of trends, it was the worst of trends. From Williamsburg to Hoxton, from Shoreditch to the Meat-packing District, and, er, just in those places really, 2002's electroclash scene blanketed the hip world like an ironic mullet. It brought energy and personality to a stale dance music scene; unfortunately it also encouraged desperate fashion students to put on off-the-shoulder jumpers and fake German accents. But then you take the bad with the good.

The best thing about electroclash - and this is always the case with any good trend/scene/movement - is that it changed the wider landscape, forcing those operating outside its limited parameters to reconsider the way they did things. And so house producers realized synths needn't be the preserve of epic trance DJs, techno producers realized that vocals, funk, and - gasp - disco should be readmitted to the kingdom, and all of us agreed that there were some pretty good groups around in the early '80s that we had completely forgotten. And Alison Goldfrapp, she realized that she didn't have to make the same album twice.

Certainly would have been easy enough for her to do. Goldfrapp and Will Gregory quietly and surprisingly sold a jillion copies of Felt Mountain, a fine album that ploughed the somewhat over-worn furrow between the cinematic and electronic, casting Goldfrapp in the role of a new Beth Gibbons. That album made it clear that there was still an audience for those sounds, but Black Cherry casts them aside completely. Why? Well, either it was an extremely ill-timed bandwagon jump, or we have here two songwriters who are paying attention to, and inspired by, the world around them.

The enthusiastic dive into "Crystalline Green" - crunching synths, descending melodies, Goldfrapp's luscious "Here we ….. gooooo" -- removes any doubts. Black Cherry's incorporation of synthcore/electroclash is just so joyous: there's not an afterthought to be found here, and even when the songwriting slips slightly (mostly on final two tracks "Forever" and "Slippage") you can still tell how much fun Gregory and Goldfrapp are having with their new toy. Stomping singles "Train" and "Strict Machine" are perfect examples, the grinding synthesized dance of prime Moroder/Summer slaving to an unconventional 2/4 shuffle that will have confused poseurs hopping in place on the dancefloor. They got 'clash kid Ewan Pearson in on 4/4 remix duties when they released the singles, mind. But the album makes no such concessions to expectation.

The dancefloor numbers will make people sit up and take notice, but the best of the ballads here - the title track and the dreadfully titled "Hairy Trees" in particular - stand up to any of Felt Mountain's best torch songs. And that's a tribute to Gregory and Goldfrapp as songwriters: having found a new milieu in which to work, they're still able to write the songs that come naturally to them, rather than force-feeding their muse.

There will certainly be those who did not bargain for Black Cherry and would have preferred Felt Mountain 2. But then there were those who jumped ship at Revolver and London Calling, too. Black Cherry is the work of artists who'd rather not sit still, and those are usually the artists worth following.

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Adult. Anxiety Always

-- Jesse Fahnestock