Whatever use you may so far have found for Goldfrapp's three albums, chances are that they're the last band you would plump for in an outdoor setting. I did put the theory to the test once, turning up to see them at an outdoor show. The band sounded fine. Alison Goldfrapp looked great. And yet it all seemed so very wrong. From the cinematic low-lit pop noir of Felt Mountain to the temple-throbbing sado-pop of Black Cherry and Supernature, Goldfrapp's natural habitat seemed to be the four windowless walls where the interests of intimacy and depravity are best suited.

We'll have to revise that view now. This album sounds as if it wasn't so much written as photosynthesised into being. Should you be so inclined, Seventh Tree will do for both orchard-based frolicking and picnicking in the shadow of standing stones. It is, in the words of Alison Goldfrapp, “a surreal folk album”. That much becomes obvious within two plucks of a bass string on Clowns as Goldfrapp's high, gauzy tones merge with strings that reference Robert Kirby's arrangements on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left.

The extensive collection of analogue contraptions they've put to such good use over the years doesn't stay away for long. On Happiness Mellotrons snap into line with the pootling pixie rhythm that Donovan used to rely on so heavily in the Sixties.

Alison Goldfrapp's presence ensures that even a bad Goldfrapp album - Supernature in 2005 fits the bill - holds more interest than most people's average ones. Like Supernature, Seventh Tree is obsessive about sonic texture. But there's an emotional heft to songs such as the fragile dawn-chorus oscillations of Some People and the breathtaking Little Bird that continues to reveal itself with repeated listens. On Monster Love, major chords rear up around the refrain of “Everything comes around” to suggest that on the heels of adversity comes a sense of renewal, mirrored in the cycle of nature.

As sentiments go, that's as folk as they come. But does it really amount to a folk album, “surreal” or otherwise? Well yes, if only in the impure sense understood by people who barely knew their trad arrs from their elbows when they first saw Britt Eckland's stunt double disrobing amid the pagan weirdness of The Wicker Man. You can quibble over terms later. But while Seventh Tree is playing, you'll want to do little other than bask.

(Mute)

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