Gossip @ TLA

Gossip
@ Theatre of the Living Arts
October 10, 2009

A few short years ago the Gossip’s trips to the City of Sisterly Affection had them getting sweaty in church basements or ghetto-licious dive bars attached to firehouses, but now they’re finding themselves full-blown pop stars. Upon the monstrous stage of the TLA on South Street, Beth Ditto and company found themselves basking in the bright lights.

Accompanying their newfound stateside stardom is a new sound. The PDX trio has abandoned any lingering remnants of Riot Grrrl for something along the lines of 80s tween pop. Although the sound has little to offer fans of 2001’s That’s Not What I Heard or 2002’s Arkansas Heat, those in attendance hardly seemed to miss the days of being punk.

Few remnants of their past, brilliantly-abrasively-confrontationally-danceable, selves were present in the evening’s set. The distortion of “Yesterday’s News” and “Don’t Make Waves” were just as crassly soulful as ever, although they had even less to do with the band’s current sound than that night’s covers of “What’s Love Got to do with It” and “We Are The Champions.”

Those who embrace the band as LGBT icons now seem to regard them more along the lines of Cher than Allison Wolfe. Fans gasped, swooned, and shook their newly-liberated asses through the better part of Gossip’s latest, Music For Men, as if they were at a block party on 12th and Spruce (and not at all as if they were celebrating the new issue of their zine in a DC basement). – Izzy Cihak