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PREACHING TO THE CONVERTED
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Two weeks ago, in a review of their new Kill Rock Stars album Movement, I made an intentionally hyperbolic claim for the Gossip by referring to them as "one of the most exciting club bands in the world right now." That statement was based on empirical evidence, namely two shows I’d seen the trio play at the Middle East over the past couple of years. One was upstairs, the other down, and neither was to a full house, though the first time, when they were first of three bands on a bill opening for the White Stripes, the room was beginning to fill with what would eventually become a capacity crowd. I remember less about the details of the second gig except that it shared one crucial element with the first: both times Beth Ditto frontwomaned — in every sense of that made-up word — as if she had something to prove and she weren’t going to let anything get in her way. The rest of the band — guitarist Nathan Howedeshell and drummer Kathy Mendonca — unassumingly set off Jon Spencer blues explosions all around her. When the Gossip returned to the Middle East a week ago Thursday, it wasn’t as a supporting act. No, they were the featured attraction at a sold-out show upstairs at the Middle East. And though that and a tank of gas will get you to NYC with a couple of reasonably nice hotel rooms, it changed the dynamic of Ditto’s performance. Guitarist Howedeshell still churned out greasy slabs of bass-heavy garage riff-raff while trying to keep greasy slabs of his hair from covering his eyes. And Mendonca pounded her drums hard without breaking a sweat, a smile, or any sticks. As for Ditto, an openly gay Arkansas-bred bloozy belter with, as they like to say in the South, a fair amount of meat on her bones, she strutted and shook as she used a voice that could sing lead in a storefront church choir to beg and plead, bully and boast, and generally impress the hell out of anyone expecting just another bass-less garage-punk band. The problem was, that amounted to maybe three people. The rest of the audience — myself included — knew what to expect. So Ditto had nothing to prove. She was preaching to the converted. And maybe she just wasn’t feeling it the way you need to feel it to be one of the most exciting bands in the world. Nobody can do that every night. So though "No, No, No" had all the girls up front nodding yeah, yeah, yeah, and a pseudo a cappella bridge in "All My Days" had people clapping along with Ditto, the Gossip didn’t have the same ferocity they’d brought to the stage that night they made anyone who’d come to see the White Stripes stop and take notice.
BY MATT ASHARE
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