Given that pop's default setting has been nu-disco for an ice age, with even Groove Armada hauling their creaking corpus on to the bandwagon, where do early adopters go now? If the latest album from electro-glam goddess Alison Goldfrapp and electronics/ production wundermann Will Gregory is anything to go by, it's into the nation's biggest, glitziest dancehalls for one final, dizzying push.

This is the pair's fifth LP and their last for Mute, so it's hard not to see it as a we-were-here flag designed to turn all comers green with envy. 'Head First' pretty much does that. Their chosen genre makes invention nigh on impossible, but although the record forms part of a natural triology with 'Black Cherry' and 'Supernature', it’s also quite unlike anything Goldfrapp have done so far. 'We wanted to write songs that had simplicity to them and just got to the point quicker', the singer has claimed.

Frankly, if these stadium sized, glitter-dusted but touchingly warm, retro-futurist electropop songs came to the point any quicker, we'd diagnose erectile dysfunction, but it's a huge point in their favour, as is the fact that the LP runs to just nine, natural-fit tracks, edited down from 13. Respect is (again) paid to Soft Cell, Giorgio Moroder and labelmates Depeche Mode, but there are more surprising nods to REO Speedwagon, Toto and Journey (on 'Believer'), Abba and Olivia Newton John (the title track, so 'Glee'-attuned Goldfrapp must be psychic) and Pat Benatar ('I Wanna Life').

'Dreaming' is a deadcert single, Goldfrapp's dark 'n' creamy, orgasmic vocal shudder offset with a winking pulse and soft strings, but the tone changes for 'Hunt's noir-ish spangle and sweet, 'O Superman'-referencing closer, 'Voicething'. Five LPs on and not only relevant, but also revitalised. Into the never-ending future a gilded Goldfrapp fly.

Sharon O'Connell