No inhibitions, hon. No indifference. No nailing yourself to the wall. No wallflowers at all. The Gossip are ripping shit, ripping shit up, ripping down banners banning dancing by the indie-rockist hipoisie as they rip the timid into the midst of this fury. And no flowery words can bring into existence the sweaty distress that's caused when florid sentiments are left to wilt and whimper under a stampede of rock-'n'-roll revivalism that comes free from sentimentalism and without the obsequiousness to haircuts that seems to be at the heart of so much rock-is-the-new-rock fare. Without fanfare, and certainly minus the kind of fanfaronade laid at the feet of likely likes like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Gossip make this revival all right by me, dropping beats to the floor without obligatory obeisance for hairy men of rock lore from rock's yore; this combo places no hands on hearts as they play with blackhearted belligerence, their sound laying down dance floors where you barely believed they could be, heartlessly enticing hearts to be beating at a fluttering rate, rating so high in my esteem that an elephant's eye isn't an appropriate metaphor. And we start taking the gospel-singing past of Gossip-singer Beth Ditto as gospel, and look heavenward for the appropriate high-meaning-high-quality imagery. Even though all of this should really be about Beth's powerfully-piped belting it out, and the throb of the two-piece combo keeping to the tightest beat of their four-disc career, and how said throb and all the hollers that go with it and the frank tone of the rec's hollered text should really conjure non-clichéd writerly review-type words salivating in syntax at such a captured distillation of sex and sweating and dancing on disc. Which should lead to, like, proclamations, to you, to be a part of the choir, to feel your spirit swell like rising bellows, to feel that blustering breeze fan flames. I proclaim that this disc is burning, and that the sweet song of this congregated band/fans/movement congregation can lift you higher than any sweet song of some choir (any hunka burning love for that matter), and that subsuming yourself to rock 'n' roll with this much soul feels like wading in the water, and that this might just be salvation. So, let me hear you say Amen. Then say it again. Because a girl can't be tied down.
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