It seems like yesterday that garage rock and dancepunk were all the rage. These days, those two genres' poster-boys have turned their backs on the sounds that made them. Jack White prefers creepy pencil-thin moustaches over ragged riffs and the Liars still dig drums, but definitely don't dance. The Washington-based trio the Gossip are still right there in the thick of it, straddling a fine line between the two.
On its third album, Standing in the Way of Control, the band tampers with its formula, chucking ragged punk for a more streamlined dance-informed sound. New drummer Hannah Blilie (formerly of Seattle's Chromatics) delivers metronomic hi-hat hits and four-on-the-floor bass kicks, while guitarist Brace Paine plays the versatile one, turning in bouncing bass lines and hooks that range from thin and trebly to distortion-drenched. But the band's calling card is singer Beth Ditto's powerfully soulful voice, which registers somewhere between Ann Wilson wail and bloodcurdling riot grrrl cord-shredder. At times, her vocals sound completely at odds with the music: far too bluesy for such a cool dance machine. Then again, it's quite a distinction among a glut of post-punk revivalists.
The album's heart is wrapped up in a three-song suite that kicks off with the uncharacteristically down-tempo "Coal to Diamonds". As Brace alternates between an ambling guitar line and rhythmic, but restrained down-strokes against Blilie's spare drums, it's Standing's first sign that the Gossip can let the motor idle. The space gives Ditto's enormous voice plenty of room to emote, as she sings of a failed romance, "I thought about it 'til my head hurt." "Eyes Open" builds on an insistent kick-drum thud and some caveman riffing that makes it clear that, even though they were raised in the South, they were weaned on Sabbath's version of the blues. And "Yr Mangled Heart" splits the difference between the two, as Brace's circular guitar and Blilie's crisp snare set a pace that repeatedly threatens to break into a full-fledged dance song. It's a kind of tease, in which the band continually reins itself and lets it all hang out in an ebb and flow of loud and quiet passages.
While the tight playing and vocal pyrotechnics are impressive, Ditto's narrow lyrical scope gets really redundant. Most of the time, she comes off like a scrappy older sister who's fought at life's frontlines and lived-- just to deliver skin-saving insights like "fight fire with fire," "on the playground we learn so much," or "you don't have to do this alone." Unless you listen to records to buoy your self-esteem, this stuff plays puddle-deep. But that feel-good vibe brings the Gossip a little closer to disco's oblivious bliss. So who cares? Just shut up and dance, punks.
