Real Power, pioneering Northwest trio Gossip’s first album since 2012, sees Beth Ditto, Nathan Houdeshell and Hannah Briley reunite and reteam with super-producer Rick Rubin, who worked on their 2009 masterpiece Music for Men. The result is a powerful comeback that celebrates the inspiring power of music, the joy of creative expression and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma.
It was Rubin who got the band back together. What began as a follow-up to Ditto’s 2017 solo debut, Fake Sugar, quickly morphed into a Gossip reunion when Ditto and Howdeshell began collaborating again under Rubin’s tutelage in his Kauai home studio just as the pandemic hit in 2019. The pair continued to record, traveling back and forth throughout the pandemic and in full creative flux, before Hannah Briley took over on drums, heightening the immediacy of the 11 tracks.
As one would expect from a Gossip album, there’s not only a mixture of sonic textures and genres, from propulsive rock to upbeat disco, but this inspired masterpiece also contains an intense mix of emotions, spanning the full range of human experience.
“We’ve all been through a lot of great loss and we’ve all turned 40 since we last recorded together,” Ditto says. “It’s a big moment in our lives.” Ditto and Brilly have each been divorced, lost close friends and family, and the world has been through a pandemic since the band last toured together for the 10th anniversary of Music for Men. All of this has brought the band even closer. “We’ve realized so many powerful things: friendship is beautiful, music is powerful, and you should never take life for granted,” Houdeshell says. “Now we see the beauty in the little things.”
That attitude influenced the making of the album. “It was so much fun. There was a real creative explosion. We were recording day and night, just burning,” Houdeshell recalls. “It was like we were on bikes, jamming. Sonically we could go after whatever we wanted. We weren’t thinking about genre, we were just throwing everything at the wall.”
“Rick has this amazing studio, all windows, and I just play guitar looking at the ocean, and that influenced the music. It could’ve been darker,” says Houdeshell. (That vibe even extends literally to the dreamy track “Turn the Card Slowly,” which “has a guitar lead that’s influenced by Hawaiian slide guitar music that I was hearing on the radio.”)
“It was so isolated and amazing working in that space,” Ditto recalls. “We had to fly in everything we needed – amps and mics and all. And there was no real vocal booth, so we had to make our own. It was recorded in a weird, chaotic way, which makes sense for Gossip, because we were all kind of foggy-headed,” she says, laughing.
Working with Rubin again gave the band the space and support to reconnect with one another and create. Houdeshell says, “Rick is pure about his creativity. He’s not interested in trends or what labels say. He’s a cheerleader and he wants the best out of us. When he works with an artist, he has the ability to bring out the best in that artist because he’s working with people he believes in.”
“It’s a very collaborative atmosphere,” Ditto agrees. “It feels like having another member of the band, but without being intrusive. He sits quietly and listens. I discuss things with him, I talk to him about emotions and I ask questions. That’s what being a producer is all about, it’s so important to process what’s going on in the moment, so you can be your best self, have the most freedom. Rick is really good at bringing out your most authentic self.”
The results speak for themselves. The title track, “Real Power,” is a dance-inspired call to power in the face of overwhelming uncertainty, a celebration of personal agency. Musically, Houdeshell likens it to “a KISS disco song.” “We come from a post-punk and dance music background, and that’s always been our jam. We were really into that on that song.” Brilly sees it as a coda to “Standing in the Way of Control,” written in response to the Federal Marriage Amendment, which made same-sex marriage illegal in the U.S. “It’s a protest song, with the same energy and purpose as ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ 20 years later,” she says. “It’s a song that people can viscerally get excited about, lyrically, and it’s awesome! The title is a homage to Iggy & the Stooges’ Raw Power, so it has that punk element to it, too.”
Ditto wrote the song in response to the Black Lives Matter protests in her hometown of Portland and around the world. Seeing coverage of the protests, especially from outlets like Fox News, she recalls, “you would think it was like Mad Max, with the city on fire and anarchy.” Instead, “this song is about how amazing our city is and how that’s become a reality. In a time when systems are being restructured and you could literally get sick from a pandemic, we were trying to make people realize that. When people come together and decide to take to the streets, that’s what real power is.”
Ditto says it’s a fitting theme for this comeback album and the band’s ethos of Gossip: “I think the real power is the power of family, chosen family and friendship. Trying to make music without Nathan was impossible! We always end up coming back together. I had my issues, but being able to talk about it openly and honestly between two crazy people, because we’re both insane, was super powerful. And also being able to come together as adults! We started the band when I was 18 and just came out of Arkansas, so to have a chance to create together as adults at 42 is really amazing. When you lose people in any capacity, you find out who your true rocks are, and it’s definitely us. It’s a really powerful relationship for me and Nathan and for Hannah too. It doesn’t feel like a reunion, it feels like we’re making another record.”
The album kicks off with a kinetic bang with “Act of God,” a song full of unbridled energy that harkens back to early Gossip. “It was awesome to get back to writing songs with Nathan on guitar, like we did as kids, and to be able to use a big part of my voice,” says Ditto. “The funny thing is, I don’t believe in God at all. It’s a metaphor, it’s a miracle we’re still here, doing what we’re doing, making music together. I’m just so grateful to have survived. It’s about the music and the feeling of being back together again.”
“Those opening lyrics give me chills,” Briley says. “‘Every beat of my heart is an act of God’s mercy’ – I’m blessed to be here, blessed to be alive. I think that’s the most beautiful feeling.” Sonically, the song is a return to Gossip’s punk roots, but with a “psychedelic Motown” twist, says Houdeshell. “It’s like a psychedelic Supremes song.”
The thrill of falling in love again is also at the heart of the album, with addictive tracks like “Give It Up For Love” (which Houdeshell describes as a “funky Talking Heads-esque jam”) and first single “Crazy Again,” the latter of which represents a new venture musically for the band. “Beth sings on this song in a range and in a way that she hasn’t sung on any Gossip record before,” Houdeshell says. “It starts out with a Young Marble Giants-esque sound, which starts out modest, but then it turns into a Go-Go’s song by the end.”
“It’s just a sweet song. I’m really in love right now and I’m so happy,” Ditto says. “He’s 48 and he does art. We’re always busy creating. This song is about being really in love and feeling so safe. I’m crazy about him!”
The album also has some slow-burning cuts, like “Peace and Quiet,” in which Ditto finds herself particularly pensive. “This song means so much to me,” Ditto says. “It’s about letting go. Divorce is crazy. All of these ups and downs, they just get bigger the older you get. We’re at an age where our parents die, even our friends die. This song just has all of those feelings in it.”
The music landscape has also changed dramatically since the band was last together, Briley points out, especially when it comes to the visibility of out and proud queer musicians. “There are so many visible queers in the mainstream music scene now, which wasn’t the case 10 years ago when we broke up. Kim Petras, transgender female pop stars Lil Nas X, Sam Smith, Christine and the Queens, Janelle Monáe… there’s this beautiful queer pop awakening happening in America and around the world, and I’m inspired by this new generation, who don’t want to hide their queerness, they want to embrace it,” Briley says. “There’s a lot of scary stuff happening politically for trans and queer people, and a lot of things we can’t control, but we can take responsibility for making art that we’re proud of and making people feel accepted.”
The timing is perfect for a Gossip reunion, with Real Power heralding a new maturity and renewed sense of purpose for the trio: “What a wonderful way to come back after so many years away, coming back strong, with purpose and with so much joy and gratitude, but also giving off a lot of don’t-care-about-the-world energy,” says Brill.
“When we started, a lot of the gossip was about escapism. It was always in the music,” Ditto says. “We survived. We came from nothing and got out of there. And it’s crazy to think that 20 years later we’re still making music together.”
Tickets for GOSSIP – September 2024 – Liverpool are available to buy here:
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Liverpool – Olympia
Website – https://www.eventim-light.com/uk/a/63cad97174fb184f4eebfa20/e/65ca4b23837bfa214392d35b
Doors open – 7pm
Tickets from £29.50 in advance
Age Restrictions – Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult
