Two days ago, I became the lucky recipient of The Gossip's brand new 12" single, complete with a Le Tigre remix.
Produced by Guy Picciotto (Fugazi) and Ryan Hadlock (Twilight Singers), "Standing in the Way of Control" is all deep and dirty Dischord-style bass and Greg Dulli-style soul vocals. In fact, if the rest of the Gosspi's upcoming album, Standing in the Way of Control, is as good as the title track, this could very well be the band's Gentlemen, the spine-tingling combination of rock and soul that makes listeners shiver and mutter, "Holy shit!"
While I have always liked the Gossip, I had a problem with the recording quality of previous albums. Beth Ditto has the sort of voice that can and really must resonate throughout the entire club, and yet the prior albums always seemed to low and grainy to ever play to a club filled with people who need to hear that voice. Hers is a voice that will cause thunderstorm tears to pour down your face as you realize that you feel just as trapped as the words in her song. This single is larger than life or, at least, larger than the dive bars in west end towns (or, actually, it's east end towns over here). It's an arena-ready dance/punk track if ever there was such a thing.
Le Tigre provides the remix on the flipside. It's a Daft Punk-goes-Acid sort of mix, the sort of sound that I had hoped to hear on their last effort, This Island, but didn't. (Was anyone else disappointed with that record?) The mix is heavy on the echo, leaving Ditto's cries of "Hey, Yeah" to sound like something straight out of Messiah's "Temple of Dreams." It's a middle of the night track bound to get everyone running to the dancefloor. I hope to test it out soon.