GOSSIP

Disco Ball: Beth Ditto's Gossip dance to their own electrifying beat on A Joyful Noise

By: MATT ASHARE |
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.