(photo: Lee Broomfield)

I had the opportunity to hear Music For Men, the new LP from Gossip a few months ago, well in advance of its release this week.  At the time, it didn’t make much of an impression on me as I thought it might.  It was a pretty decent album, actually, and it surprised me how dance orientated it was given Rick Rubin produced it.  I guess what left me feeling a bit empty was that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations of what I thought Beth Ditto and company would produce for their major label debut.  In hindsight, I don’t know exactly what I expected, but I thought that such an outspoken and dynamic individual would have brought more confrontation, more drama, more… something.

So I have had this album in my possession for months now, and I always said I’d return to it closer to its actual release date (even though it’s been out in the UK since June it’s just come out now in North America), but you know what happens, things get put on the back burner and you forget about it.  I probably wouldn’t have really thought about the album at all this week if I hadn’t caught just a snippet of conversation between the band and Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio’s Q Tuesday morning.  It was literally less than three minutes of conversation, but in that time the band managed to bring that “something” that I had been craving, the elusive piece that started to make sense of the album.

In reference to the album’s title and art work, Beth Ditto pointed out that the major label music industry is pretty much dominated by men, therefore one could extend that all major label music is basically music for men by men, and how odd it felt for her to be in that game.  Also, having a rather striking and masculine looking Hannah Billie (the band’s drummer) on the cover, looking very Morrissey/David Bowie enforces the dichotomy of the title and confronts the American music buying public, who have been much slower to warm to the band than their European counterparts.  Is the America that voted for an African-American president open enough to accept a plus-size lesbian fashion icon as a new role model?  I highly doubt it.  Ghomeshi wondered aloud during the interview how it feels to have been accepted and celebrated in Europe more so than in their homeland, but Ditto was quick to point out that all her life, she and the band have felt like outsiders, so why should it be any different now?

The answer is, because Music For Men is actually a pretty damn fine fusion of punk-DIY ethics, dance floor sensibilities, and believe it or not, soul.  They’re not the first indie three-piece band to make a stab at a more populist sound this year (Gossip are treading on similar ground to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs here), but they’re still miles for being your  standard pop rock icons.  Everything about them runs in opposition to what popular culture says is cool, and hip, and right.  They’re as far from cookie cutter pop stars as you can get, and they’ve managed to make the major-label crossover without giving in and giving up who they are or what they believe.  That’s something.

MP3: Gossip “Heavy Cross”
Mypace: Gossip