Black Cherry

Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory came into their own after a somewhat tentative debut three years earlier. Black Cherry showed a newfound focus on “Strict Machine,” an electronic-glam shuffle that exemplifies electroclash’s sex-clubs-and-drugs mythologizing while pushing at its boundaries. The bubbling textures on the zoned out “Crystalline Green” and the icy, remote title track broke far beyond genre constraints, and consequently Black Cherry is one of the best albums of its era.