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| Volume 11, No. 43 |
July 28-3, 2010 |
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| | The Audio File #133 | | By Ryan B. Martinez | | 
Blathering about Gossip
For the most part, I don’t care who likes what I like. I embrace my favorite records and artists whether they’ve been accepted by the masses, a small but existent cult audience, or just me and their moms.
But sometimes a record or artist comes by that is so undeniably good you want to evangelize about them. Not so much evangelize, but simply show them to people and let the inevitable unfold – giddy infatuation, rampant downloading, logo tats on buttocks, fansite creation, restraining orders, etc.
Now, when I show an artist or song or album to a friend and they don’t respond, or I make a mental note of a song that never materializes as a hit, it’s a little unnerving. Not totally – because it’s not like I’m some sad culture snob who stakes his self-worth on his musical taste (… awkward silence …) – but just a little jarring.
You feel like that guy in “They Live” who has special sunglasses that reveal who’s a society-infiltrating alien in disguise and who’s not. But nobody’s listening to your warnings. And then you go on to star in a bunch of really bad ’90s TV shows that make your former career as a kilt-wearing pro wrestler look like a step up.
But I digress. My point is sometimes something is so good that to not have it validated by The Outside World is a bit like everyone insisting that blue is red – when it’s totally not, it’s blue, stupids. It’s an epistemological crisis rather than an aesthetic one: Are my ears working? Is my brain processing these sounds in a manner that correlates to reality? Is this thing on?
The last time I felt this strongly about a new find was three weeks ago, when I saw Audra Mae sing with Jim Ward and Chuck Ragan at Take II. The guys were great. Their voices, emotive and distinct, stole much of the show (Jim’s song about his departed cousin, Jeremy Ward, was the absolute high point). But the revelation for me was Audra Mae. I thought, “If there is justice in this world, she will be famous one day.”
I bought Audra’s five-track EP on the spot, and it was just good, with one exception: a beautiful song about a soldier fighting in the Civil War writing to his love back home. If she records a full-length with at least a few singles that good, and it’s marketed just right, she’ll be famous and I’ll be able to say “See?! I KNEW it!” to old ladies passing me on the street.
Now I’ve come across a new revelation, which maybe is the wrong term because it applies to a band I’ve known and loved for a couple of years. It’s the new Gossip album, “Music For Men.”
Gossip is a punk trio from Portland, Ore., who are better known on the other side of the Atlantic because they’re darlings of the British press. They even filmed a concert video in Liverpool.
Their lead singer is Beth Ditto, a charismatic, plus-sized lesbian with a voice as mighty as Aretha Franklin’s. No hyperbole there. In song and in interviews she’s brash and outspoken, especially on topics of body image and sexuality. The title track of Gossip’s 2006 album, “Standing in the Way of Control,” is a punk-rock call-to-arms against the Bush Administration’s support of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.
The revelation about the new album is it’s a pop masterpiece. That’s right, pop – not punk. It was produced by Rick Rubin, the bushy-bearded music maestro who has put his Midas Touch on everyone from the Beastie Boys to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The guy’s still got it. The new record is polished. The beats by drummer Hannah Blilie are so tight they almost sound programmed. Sharp guitar licks are hard to resist. And, of course, Ditto’s voice soars and whips and rages.
And the songs are simply there; filler is nowhere to be found. Most tracks are second-person tirades about lovers who done Ditto wrong, but there are also the rah-rah numbers that have the spirit of punk if not the sound.
“Men in Love” is about just that, a dance tribute to male homosexuality – a catchy inculcation of a former DSM mental condition. The chorus of “Pop Goes the World,” a song with vague revolutionary intent, explodes into a barrage of synthesizers and Ditto’s irresistible, anthemic “Pop! Pop! Pop! Goes the World!”
It isn’t complex stuff, but pop never is. And I can’t wait to say I–told-you-so to old ladies on the street.
Comments or questions about this story? E-mail Secret@whatsuppub.com
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