Gospel Gossip, Sing Into My Mouth

Sing Into My Mouth, by Saint Paul, Minnesota’s Gospel Gossip, begins, in classic Butthole Surfers’ style, with ambient guitar strums and jangles as parentheses around a series of recorded samples. It’s nothing new, I’ll admit, but neither is the “Star Spangled Banner” before a baseball game. It doesn’t matter how important or momentous the game that follows is, it always has the same preamble. Here, it’s “Home is Where the Hibah^* is,” and it whets your appetite perfectly for the coming opus. It’s like the perfect wine for your entrée.

I’ve heard guitarist/singer Sarah Nienaber compared to Siouxsie Sioux before, and the comparison is well justified on tracks like “Revolution is Physics” and “Wire.” They have that wonderful punky feeling that the Banshees and the Cure were so revolutionary in creating. It’s a total absence of regard for boundaries but still very defined in what it is. That’s the overall feeling of Sing Into My Mouth, that it defies its own shoegazer label to be something that can be truly awesome.

There’s a wonderful little experiment done throughout the album in the form of a poem song called “(Maybe Next Fall).” The song is broken up into three almost equal units as tracks 4, 7, and 12, each totally separate but completing the trilogy nicely. Placed as they are, each piece is perfect in its position in the listing, with “(Next),” in particular, giving a nice low after the incredible instrumental havoc wreaked in “Lucky Lemmings.”

And while I wouldn’t expect to see Gospel Gossip featured in Guitar Hero any time soon, Nienaber easily shows her incredible skills with both apocalyptic thrashes and low whispers. She’s one of those truly gifted guitarists who know both when to burn through your pick, and when to shut up. Blessing upon every single one of them.

Sing Into My Mouth, is a worthy addition to any CD collection. From start to finish, there is a never-ending set of tricks to keep you plugged in and turned on.

^*Hibah is an Islamic term meaning “the giving of a gift.”