The Gossip - 'Listen Up'

Is it EVER possible to mention The Gossip and deftly side-step including such trivial matters as being fat, lesbian and American?  Quite possibly.  However, nothing that can detract from that voice; the essentially stalwart riot-girl foundations that have created the gossip, kept them going until their third album (yes, they were going before we heard them on channel four).  ‘Listen Up’, aside from being a glistening, triumphant pop-song, wrestles genuine raging anger:  bristling with suspicion and lashing out with feisty girl-no-nonsense channelling not as evident since Kathleen Hanna first started to scrawl fanzines and her bandmate began to tell certain skinny boys in grunge bands just how they smelt.  The Gossip are important: not just to lend their well-crafted, three minute pop gems to some of the finest remixes to widen-eyes on electro-dancefloors, but in resurrecting riot grrl and two-finger fuck offs to all those who say you can’t do what you want to do because of who you are or who you’re not. You get the impression that the penchant for lap-tops, French genre-hybrids and hyphenated to the point of strangulation genre-definitions are not what this band are about: you can ‘disco-puck-nu-rave-indie-bleep-fat-core’ ‘til your neon-plimsolls fall off but the fact is, its all really rather unnecessary.  ‘Listen up’ is simple: instantly handbags-down dancealong; insistent guitar riffs; seductive bass-hooks; Ditto’s incredible voice.  Size zero may get you an invite to Nicole Richie’s pool-party (one cocktail and you snap); but it sure as hell won’t make songs like this.

Released 11/06/07 on Backyard Records