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Gospel Gossip Album Release Party March 21, 2013 at 7th Street Entry
////Gospel Gossip
///Ex Nuns //Flavor Crystals /Hollow Boys Read More Gospel Gossip have sent me to reverb heaven, again. The Minneapolis-based group’s new three-song 7”, Atlantic Blue, is an undeniably consistent offering from the band...
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I realized recently why I like Gospel Gossip so much. I’m a sucker for epic finales. You know the ones; the emotional crescendos that finish your favorite albums, leaving you with that sense of “wow” that render you motionless for several minutes after the album has clicked off to silence, still hearing that repeated hook or fading chorus echoing between your ears. Gospel Gossip’s self-titled full-length, out today, takes that feeling and bottles it – impossibly letting it leak out slowly through each and every song.
For that same reason it’s impossible to pick out a standout track from this album. I can’t spot a peak when the whole presents a high plateau – it has the feel of an epilogue strung out over an entire album. Vocalist Sarah Nienaber conveys distant longing; her voice is reminiscent of a singer in the next room, audible but sill very much behind a foreground of psychedelic guitar reverb, resulting in a surreally haunting, forlorn tone. Always leaving, never gone.
This past weekend I had occasion to visit an Alzheimer’s wing. A few rooms down dwelled an elderly ex-opera singer, who periodically made her presence known during my visit: It seems she is prone to briefly singing out at the top of her lungs at all times of the day and night. Sometimes it’s a scale, sometimes just a simple “C.” I imagined that she had been singing so long, it was as natural as breathing. Or perhaps it was just her way of saying “I’m here. I’m not done.” Now, no one would confuse Sarah Nienaber’s diminutive whisper with the voice of an opera singer, but I would still argue that the tone this album captures is not altogether dissimilar: We all have one more epic finale in us. And another. And another. May they never end.
For that same reason it’s impossible to pick out a standout track from this album. I can’t spot a peak when the whole presents a high plateau – it has the feel of an epilogue strung out over an entire album. Vocalist Sarah Nienaber conveys distant longing; her voice is reminiscent of a singer in the next room, audible but sill very much behind a foreground of psychedelic guitar reverb, resulting in a surreally haunting, forlorn tone. Always leaving, never gone.
This past weekend I had occasion to visit an Alzheimer’s wing. A few rooms down dwelled an elderly ex-opera singer, who periodically made her presence known during my visit: It seems she is prone to briefly singing out at the top of her lungs at all times of the day and night. Sometimes it’s a scale, sometimes just a simple “C.” I imagined that she had been singing so long, it was as natural as breathing. Or perhaps it was just her way of saying “I’m here. I’m not done.” Now, no one would confuse Sarah Nienaber’s diminutive whisper with the voice of an opera singer, but I would still argue that the tone this album captures is not altogether dissimilar: We all have one more epic finale in us. And another. And another. May they never end.
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