mixtape maestro (2.0)

On the opening verse of Music For Men peak moment “Love Long Distance”, a tense indie-disco foundation of four-on-the-floor stomp, one-finger house piano and a back-and-forth bassline tiptoe help visualize scenes of Beth Ditto nervously pacing to and fro across her living room floor, tapping her toes impatiently as she continually dials the number to an un-answering faraway lover. “I’ve had it with your antics/ Your childish games,” she resigns, the “I told you so” background murmuring of surrounding friends fueling her decision.

It’s a thrilling introduction to another one of the band’s crispily-produced club-aimed entries, and thankfully, the fun doesn’t end there.

As the song goes on, a ferocious bass chug helps thicken out the production mix to signify Ditto’s increasing sense of frustration and heartache as she continues to rip into her heartless partner, at one point cleverly adding a nice little twist to an old Motown line (“I heard it through the bass line/ Not much longer would you be my baby”).

Those who (somewhat understandably) balk at Gossip’s continuous detour away from their roughened blues-punk beginnings for a more polished dance edge will surely have more negative things to say about this track (and much of the new album’s) poppier aesthetic, but let them whine; Gossip have shown with “Heavy Cross” and now “Love Long Distance” that, as Randy Jackson would say, they are “in it to win it” in 2009, and, at least from this corner of the Web-iverse, it’s a move much appreciated.

It’s understandable why longtime Gossip fans might be a little concerned after hearing the now-Portland-based band’s new single, “Heavy Cross”: with it’s semi-polished dance-rock thrust and tinge of disco, it has very little in common with the shaggy blues-rock that defined their earlier output. But damn if it still isn’t an epic mind-blower that launches their new major label-backed, Rick Rubin-produced era on an exciting note.

It’s slow-build intro of tightly-wound guitar, starry-eyed keyboard notes and Beth Ditto’s wailing of “a cruel, cruel world” kicks things off thrillingly, but once it’s main groove enters the picture a minute of the way in, an explosion of twitchy riffage and Beth’s eruption-like testifying, “Cross” grabs firm hold over your entire body and refuses to let go, beating you over the heard with it’s Stevie Nicks-ish fireworks until you have no choice but to let loose and pull out your best strut-shimmy.

If nothing else, after months of having so many tiny-voiced, electro-pop pixie chicks make us shake what our mother’s gave us, it’s simply exhilarating to be blasted across the fact with the super-sized pipes of Ditto on a ferocious dance charmer like this.

Catch the “maybe-or-maybe-not” official video of “Cross”, followed by an offering of the spazzy, Black Lights-helmed remix, below.

“Heavy Cross”‘ parent album, Music For Men, arrives June 22nd.

DL: “Heavy Cross (Black Lights Remix)” (alt)