Disco Ball: Beth Ditto's Gossip dance to
their own electrifying beat on A Joyful Noise
By:
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Published: May 23, 2012
Published: May 23, 2012
Gossip, A Joyful Noise (Columbia)
POWER TRIO: Seamlessly moving from one dance-floor to another |
The
first time I encountered the Gossip about a dozen years ago, they were still
called the Gossip. On a club tour with the then much buzzed about White Stripes,
the Olympia-by-way-of-Arkansas trio had already established themselves as a
presence in the Great Northwest's insular indie scene. But their act — and
oh, what an act — hadn't yet made much of an impression on the east coast. For
instrumentation, they didn't have much more to work with than the White
Stripes: just a diminutive female drummer (Kathy Mendonca), and a skinny
guitarist in geek glasses (Brace Paine). Then there was frontwoman Beth Ditto,
a large and larger-than-life bombshell dolled up in some kind of improvised
lingerie ensemble with a big Big Mama Thornton voice — an r&b rocking
riot-grrrl hell-bent on empowering indie-rock nation to unfold their arms and,
gasp, dance their asses off.
Drums pounded fast and furiously. Buzzsaw
guitar riffs gathered a full head of psychobilly steam. Ditto twisted, shouted,
and testified her way through a sweaty forty-plus minutes of explosive
blues-powered punk. People started a movin' to the hyperkinetic groovin'. And
the friend I'd come with turned to me and dryly remarked, "I'd hate to be
the White Stripes tonight."
It was, so to speak, memorable. In one fell swoop, Ditto had injected
some much needed overt sexuality into a genre (indie-rock, indie-punk,
whatever. . .) that had been largely neutered by an abundance of smart-assed
irony and a cerebral urge to deconstruct rockist norms. Not that either of
those are bad things. But even good ideas can be taken a little too far.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to capture
the kind of sexual energy Ditto brought to the stage in a studio setting. And,
that was a problem for the band on their first two relatively lo-fi indie
albums, 2000's That's Not What I Heard and 2003's Movement. That also may be why they quickly followed up in 2003
with Undead In NYC, a fiery live album that also marked a
transition for the band: first they opted to drop the "the" from
their name; then Mendonca was replaced by Hannah Billie on drums; and, finally,
Columbia Records came calling with a major label deal.
It would have been hard to imagine the
over-the-top Ditto and her raucous band as a mainstream crossover a decade ago.
But times have changed and so have Gossip. Their first stab, Standing In the
Way of Control (2005), mostly just used higher-end studio production to
polish a bit of the grit away from their blues-punk riffs. But there were also
intrusions of grandeur as Ditto took command as a soul sister and disco diva on
several darker hued dance tracks. The results won over fans in England and
earned the band a slot on the Logo-sponsored True Colors Tour, featuring the
LGBT-friendly artists Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry, and Rufus Wainwright.
Apparently, the riot-grrrl in Ditto didn’t have a problem with
taking Gossip in a more mainstream pop direction. By 2009’s coyly titled Music
For Men, they were working a very different kind of dance-floor angle with
heavyweight producer Rick Rubin at the helm, eschewing garage-toned rock for
darkly lit, glitter-ball pop, replete with the requisite star-DJ remixes. It
was an oddly seamless transition for a band who had been so well entrenched in
the punk underground. And it seems to have suited them: As Ditto geared up for
the release of the band’s new A Joyful Noise this week, she was also
preparing to unveil her own makeup line through MAC Cosmetics.
The new disc more or less picks up where Music for Men left
off, only this time Gossip have teamed up with a full-on electro-power-pop
producer, Brian Higgins of the Xenomania production group, brought on German
house DJ Fred Falke to co-write a track (the thump-and-grind groover “Move In
the Right Direction”), and embraced the notion that there’s nothing
particularly wrong with being the flip-side of the Lady Gaga coin. Not that there’s
anything here quite as pedestrian as “Just Dance” or even “Born This Way.” Even
when Ditto’s dancing around a simplistic chorus like, “I will hold back the
tears/So I can move in the right direction/I have faced my fears/Now I can move
in the right direction,” she’s got the gospel guts of genuine disco diva.
A Joyful Noise is built on a foundation of billowing
Euro-pop synth tones and pulsing sequencers, with just a bit of Paine’s guitar
grit lurking in the background of “Perfect World,” dropping down some distorted
power-rock chords in the urgent “Melody Emergency,” and lending a key riff or
two to the funkified “Horns” and the sweetly sinister “I Won’t Play.” But this
is a showcase for Ditto’s voice, a convincing instrument of empowerment that hasn’t
been dulled by the Blondie-like move from punk to disco. That’s right -- this
isn’t the first time a female-fronted underground band has embraced, and been
in embraced by, the pop world. And it’s not likely to be the last.