One of the stranger perks of this new Goldfrapp remix collection is how much it's helped clarify all the reasons I could never really love the duo's last album, Supernature. The record was certainly stylish-- a big, terrifying burst of electronic glam, ridiculously chic, complete with glitterball ponies and horse-headed dancers and evil-Kylie choreography. It was, in fact, so immediately, energetically, and obviously cool that snatches of it now adorn commercials for all manner of consumer products. But despite all that, the damned thing just didn't sound very good.
Between its grainy buzz, its massive tidal waves of synthesizer, its overwhelming machine-tooled energy, and the blaringly loud volume at which records are mastered these days, Supernature wound up feeling like a bully. And while being bullied by Goldfrapp can be an awfully pleasant experience for a song or two, at album length it was draining. Even with some slower tunes in the middle, the effect was like watching a cheerleading tournament on cable: The first routine can seem pretty spectacular, but by the fourth the whole thing becomes a torturous hell of overstimulation and noise, to the point where you practically need to listen to some Garrison Keillor just to regain your composure. (This is how really old people experience the world all the time.)
All of which makes We Are Glitter one of a special category of remix albums-- the sort that actually settles down from the originals, spinning brash, bullying pop out into something slower-building, more spacious, and more dynamic. This is dancefloor Goldfrapp that actually lets you breathe. The selection of remixers is impressive, and while the tracks a lot of them turn in are just about exactly what you'd expect of them there's a variety to the results that makes the experience of listening through the disc a much more comfortable one.
The best of the bunch diffuse their tension over slow builds. The standout is Detroit techno legend Carl Craig's take on "Fly Me Away", which he turns-- and I mean this literally-- into Donna Summer's "I Feel Love": That touchstone Moroder bassline goes pulsing up and down while Alison G. coos all alone around it, making a good bid for the exquisite sense of space and suspended motion in the original. Same goes for French house legends Alan Braxe and Fred Falke reworking "Number One" and prodding it slowly up into some elegant synth pads and swells: If this is Autobahn-cruising music, it's Autobahn-cruising with A Flock of Seagulls in the back seat.