When Gossip announced their reunion last year, it looked like the Portland dance-punk trio had zipped into formation for the indie sleaze revival, the cultivators of its original aughts inspiration rightfully returning to their throne. But Gossip actually got back together in 2019, seven years after the band’s unexpected dissolution in 2012, when singer Beth Ditto returned to Rick Rubin’s home studio in Kauai to pen the follow-up to her debut solo album. Once she invited former bandmates Nathan Howdeshell to bounce ideas around with and Hannah Blilie to drum, those songwriting sessions turned collaborative quickly and, most promising of all, effortlessly. This was no longer a solo record; the band was back. “That’s the beauty of working with people you’ve known for so long,” Ditto told NME. “There’s no glamorous story, you just go: okay.”
In reuniting without explicit intentions or expectations, Gossip created a comeback album, Real Power, that sidesteps the feeling of trying on old clothes. There’s no pressure to once again soundtrack Skins’ teenage melodrama, dominate sticky clubs at 2 a.m., or hoist nonconformist anthems into the sky as a political statement. With no predetermined agenda guiding the album, Real Power plays like the jovial, carefree sound of friends enjoying each other’s company; they just happen to have instruments in hand.
Real Power slips into disco pop with a type of easygoing simplicity that begets happiness, even while Gossip address divorce, death, and isolation. Howdeshell and Blilie are to credit for that contradiction; the two continually lay down heavy grooves with a light touch, be it the sugar rush of “Edge of the Sun” or that gratuitous cowbell over slap bass on “Give It Up for Love.” Even when Ditto goes full diva belting out the title track, a glam anthem about Portland’s impassioned Black Lives Matter protests during the pandemic, she radiates pride: “Head is in the clouds, I’m moving mountains/Do you feel what I feel?” The way the three of them gyrate in sync is the answer.
While modern-day peers are effectively updating the dance-punk sound through minimalist pop or trying too hard to emulate the rebellious partying that indie sleaze’s latter-day documentarians glorify, Gossip are looking beyond that altogether, instead emphasizing spontaneity and low-key beats. They dare you to dance to softer sounds, like a stripped-back bassline in the style of the xx on “Turn the Card” or the rakish fingersnaps pushed to the front of country redux “Peace and Quiet.” Early on, “Don’t Be Afraid” lays down a dub groove establishing mood better suited for smoking a joint on your friend’s couch than doing bumps in the club bathroom. While the songs on 2012’s A Joyful Noise often overstayed their runtimes, Real Power knows when to bail. On the sneaky standout “Light It Up,” Gossip craft a collective trance with mellow synths and dreamy guitar reverb that turn Ditto’s lyrics—“Start a fire/Let it rage/Burn it up/Watch it go down in flames”—into a meditation on rebirth and new beginnings.
Ditto has always been colorful, from self-dying her hair with Kool-Aid in childhood to picking palettes for her plus-sized clothing line in Vogue. As she settles into her forties, she’s discovered that one of the most direct ways to extend her confidence, both to herself and others, is with patience. When Howdeshell relocated to his childhood farm in Arkansas in 2015 and became a born-again Christian, Ditto—an atheist—felt like she’d lost a friend to his past, and she mourned a creative death; in time, however, she learned to accept it. Over the bare beat of “Tough,” Ditto reflects on what it means to have faith in readjusted perceptions: “You need a change, so make a change/We’ll figure out something.” Much of Real Power revels in the way those deep breaths help steady us. In the case of Ditto’s scrapped sophomore solo album, they’re also to thank for Gossip’s graceful return in Real Power.
