plorentz's Full Review: Standing in the Way of Control by The Gossip
Okay, so here's a true confession for y'all. I have an almost insurmountable prejudice against (gulp) gay bands that I've only read about in gay magazines or seen at gay functions. It's fine if I discover a band that's gay while listening to the radio (yeah, right) or, say, watching MTV (dude, what are you on?), or if I read a review of them in Rolling Stone or Spin or some other such periodical not directed towards a specifically gay audience.
I used to subscribe to all the big gay magazines - The Advocate, Out, Genre, the International Male catalog - but I realized that I never really cared to read about gay artists whose audiences were almost totally gay, because my notions of those artists was that they made music that was just about being gay. It's the same reason I dislike so much of contemporary Christian music. No matter how faithful, how devout you are, there's got to be more to life than being a Christian. And no matter how gay you are and how out you are, there's really got to be more to life than gayness. And if there isn't, well that's just sad. And like my lesbian friend Anna once remarked regarding singer-songwriter Tret Fure - just because she's gay doesn't make her music any good. And just because we're gay doesn't mean we have to like it.
The recently launched Logo network has repeatedly challenged my pre-conceptions about these ghetto-ized gay artists, if only because, with their weekly internet poll countdown show (The Click List) and their brilliant weekly music video anthology hour called NewNowNext, they seem to consciously acknowledge that there's no such thing as gay music - only gay audiences - and those audiences tastes are as wildly diverse as the people themselves. And in this context, a group I might have ignored all along due to The Advocate's almost exclusive advocacy of them - a group like the Arkansas-native, Portland-based trio The Gossip - appears as part of a larger scene of music which incorporates all sorts of sounds mainstream hitmakers like Kanye West and Natasha Bedingfield (and of course, Madonna), alt-rock heroes like Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand, as well as long-established gay artists like Erasure, thus making this gay underground seem relevant.
Is this wrong?
It's kind of sad that it's taken me so long to give The Gossip a chance, because, as demonstrated by their latest video, the rip-roaring title track to their fourth full-length album Standing in the Way of Control (you can watch it at logoonline.com), their White Stripes-meets-Franz Ferdinand-in-the-back-room-of-a-downtown-latex-fetish-shop sound totally rocks out. It's confrontational and minimal, stark, punk, and totally danceable.
And at a time when it seems that every girl singer has to look like a skinny blonde first-night-at-the-club stripper, lead singer Beth is a revelation - a streetwise big girl unabashedly overflowing with sex and bluesy night club swagger. She's the most immediately compelling frontwoman I've seen in ages, her performances almost like a form of bitter revenge for any number of adolescent wrongs committed against her and her friends at school. She's every girl I ever dated in high school. At prom, she knew all the words to all the slow dances and never danced them, but when they played "You Shook Me All Night Long", she commandeered the entire dance floor for herself and rocked it. And in so doing, she may have earned the outward ridicule of the prom queen, but if watched, and listened closely, you could almost hear that little empty cheerleader's heart dying.
Beth is not really a good singer. Her pitch is always just the tiniest bit off. She oversings everything. Instead of hitting high notes, she extrudes from her body long snakey, barely musical wails. But, for the most part, she turns these apparent shortcomings into strengths. It's not about singing the melodies (and there are melodies) so much as expressing them; and this girl expresses so completely - especially on a song like "Yr Mangled Heart" where each chorus is an act of unfettered emotional violence - that while sometimes a little scary, it's never less than riveting.
Unfortunately, the songs often don't (can't) match the band's sound and vision for sheer b-movie thrills. Mostly they come and go, leaving only a faint impression behind. And sometimes you even wish that impression would go away. "Coal to Diamonds" is a weepy hillbilly ballad that can't end soon enough; and the echo-drenched album closer "Dark Lines" evokes Peggy Lee fronting some obscure surf rock band (The Astronauts, maybe?), but comes off more raw than seductive.
Ultimately The Gossip succeed more on vibe than substance. But that vibe is so convincing, so vividly expressed, and so butt-nastily wonderful that you can't help but forgive them their shortcomings, shut your big fat mouth, and shake your big fat rump.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Standing in the Way of Control" by The Gossip
Kill Rock Stars Records
Released 10/11/05
Produced by The Gossip
36 min.
SONGS: Fire with Fire - Standing in the Way of Control - Jealous Girls - Coal to Diamonds - Eyes Open - Yr Mangled Heart - Listen Up! - Holy Water - Keeping You Alive - Dark Lines
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