GOSSIP

 

Real Power, pioneering Northwest trio Gossip’s first album since 2012, finds Beth Ditto, Nathan Howdeshell and Hannah Blilie back together and reunited with super producer Rick Rubin, who helmed their 2009 opus Music For Men.The result is a comeback of magnum force that celebrates the galvanizing might of music, the joy of creative expression, and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma.

 

It was Rubin who coaxed the band back together again. What started out as a follow-up to Ditto’s 2017 solo debut Fake Sugar quickly turned into a Gossip reunion when Ditto and Howdeshell began collaborating again, under the tutelage of Rubin, at his home studio in Kauai just as the pandemic was hitting in 2019.The pair traveled back and forth throughout the pandemic, recording in marathon spurts of creativity.Hannah Blilie subsequently laid down the drums ratcheting up the immediacy of the eleven tracks. Not only is there a mix of sonic textures and genres from propulsive rock to jubilant disco, as to be expected from a Gossip album, there’s also a mix of heady emotions on this inspired tour deforce, encompassing the full range of the human experience.