The Gossip's soulful punk comes from the heart
by Joe Tarr
The Gossip is driving to a show in Minneapolis, and singer Beth Ditto has been rousted from a nap to answer a few questions from a pesky reporter. She's a little groggy, and the cell phone she's on keeps cutting in and out.
But it's unmistakably her voice—commanding and soulful—even if it is sleep-deprived. On stage and record, her singing is fiercely emotional—conjuring up Bessie Smith's bluesy yowl and Aretha Franklin's spiritual singing as much as Johnny Rotten's fierce growl.
There's no special trick to how she came to sing this way, Ditto explains. "I just couldn't sing quiet," Ditto says. "I couldn't sing like a wimpy girl. I don't have a meek little voice. I just have a strong voice. It just comes out that way."
High school friends, The Gossip formed about five years ago in Searcy, Ark., guitar player Nathan Howdeshell says. He and Ditto followed drummer Kathy Mendonca to Olympia, Wash., where she went to college. The group was immediately lumped into the Northwest's riot grrl scene with Sleater Kinney, Bikini Kill, et. al. The group certainly shares an aesthetic (and label and stage) with some of those bands, but the blues and gospel influence is hard to miss. Ditto started singing young. When she was 4 her mom found her singing on key and recognized she had a knack. She was soon singing in school and church choirs. Today, she counts Roberta Flack, Missy Misdemeanor and Mama Cass as influences.
Unlike some bands (like say, the Make Up), The Gossip doesn't sound like they're mocking or aping classic gospel. The group's wedding of DIY punk aesthetics and noise with bluesy, booming vocals sounds completely natural.
Ditto says that's probably because the group wasn't consciously trying to mimic anything in particular and had been influenced by a bunch of different sounds. "I didn't have anything in mind really. I didn't know what [the music] was going to sound like. It wasn't thought out at all. We were playing around in the basement."
Howdeshell sees it more in line with some classic art bands. "It's kind of noise melody," he says. "I think that's what the Velvet Underground was doing—rudimentary playing, noise guitars, but you put a really good vocal harmony over it. A lot of the early punk stuff had that."
Howdeshell's ragged guitar plays brilliantly off of Ditto's vocals—the guitar gives the sound a tension and edge, which Ditto releases in her vocals, punching the energy over the top.
Howdeshell says the music is composed in a democratic fashion. "It's very group oriented. Beth makes up the lyrics and melody, I make up the guitar, and Beth plays the drums. It's a simple punk approach to playing songs. We don't think about it too much. The simpler, the better for us," Howdeshell says. "Punk music and noise music, I'm really influenced by. A lot of the early punk stuff and no-wave is really expressionist and loud and noisy."
There's a political outrage to some of Ditto's lyrics—their EP Arkansas Heat includes "(Take Back) the Revolution," which identifies with a working mother. Another song condemns the town they left. Quoting her lyrics doesn't do them much justice since so much of their beauty is in the delivery. Her singing is mournful—a lot of broken-hearted songs—but it doesn't make you sad. Their second LP, Movement, radiates with existential blues.
"I like to be mad. Sometimes being happy is good too, but it just doesn't make a good song. I like sad songs that are aggressive," she says.
What is it exactly that fuels her anger? "You don't have to look for it. The country sucks, the world sucks. You don't have to look for things to be mad about, bad things happen every day," she says. "They occur naturally."
The energy level at a Gossip concert can exceed that of a Southern evangelical revival meeting. While the band won't be pushing Jesus on you, there's definitely a feeling that music—emotion, art, and the sharing of those through community—can offer a real salvation.
"We don't just stand there and play and pretend we're not there," Howdeshell says. "I hope people come to our shows and have fun. I hope they don't feel ripped off. We want them to have fun."
July 17, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 29
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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