The Gossip
That's Not What I Heard (Kill Rock Stars)
by Marc Hirsh
The Gossip
That's Not What I Heard (Kill Rock Stars)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2002
The recipients/victims of an unfair degree of hype in certain indie circles, the Arkansas-born/Olympia-based Gossip have been lauded less for what they are than for what they aspire to be, which is almost always a sign of trouble. The minimalist blues fugues on That's Not What I Heard represent a sort of anti-Beefheart; mining some of the same raw materials as the good Captain, they simplify where he embellishes, clarify where he obfuscates and recapitulate where he invents. And they possess in frontwoman Beth a singer of such vocal force as to apparently blind those who should know better to her clear lack of range, discipline, dynamics and power, which is not the same thing.
Just as Beth's full-throated belt sounds more like bravado than confidence, so do the lyrics come off more hesitant than she'd like you to believe, sticking pretty staunchly to a salty-girl theme that she never quite pulls off. In the very first track, she confronts what should be a salacious double entendre and fumbles it; exhorting her lover to "swing low, down low, sweet chariot," she immediately defangs the line with a nudging and uncertain, "if you know what I mean." Like it or not, she's set the tone for the entire album less than 30 seconds in.
By then, the music's used up most of its bag of tricks as well. That's Not What I Heard is not much more than a collection of riffs. Adhering to a completely modular approach to songwriting, the Gossip come up, in every song, with a few parts waiting to be used, repeated and switched around as desired. Each component leads more or less smoothly to the next, which isn't an indication that they know what to play and when to play it so much as a testament to the common ore from which everything on the record is mined. If it all seems to fit, it's because the pieces are interchangeable.
I suppose that it's admirable, in a way, to commit to only using guitar and drums (although I could swear I hear some double-tracking somewhere in there, which, frankly, seems kinda dishonest), but it doesn't really allow for any dynamics whatsoever. The Gossip hit their mark right at the start and don't, or won't, or can't, go up or down. That's Not What I Heard suffers from an utter lack of forward momentum as a result, and the otherwise preposterously skimpy 14 songs in 24 minutes take an awfully long time to elapse. When it was over, I was left with the nagging suspicion that the Gossip left the South not just to find brother- and sisterhood (not to mention sexual freedom) amongst the like-minded punks of the Northwest scene but very possibly because the blues scene back home knew that they just weren't ready yet. They'll mature, but only if they don't believe their own press and convince themselves that they've already made it. If they can avoid that trap, the Gossip may someday truly be worth talking about.