Maybe I'm just unhealthy. Maybe I never grew up. But when I hear Beth Ditto sing—and is it singing really, or is it cutting the air with a beautiful pink-handled razor of serrated soul to see if there's a bleeding, throbbing heart inside stone-faced reality itself?—about keeping her friends alive (when it's barely together / it's you and me forever), or escaping in the dark from the pains of love (the taste on your lips / by a small fire's gleam), or not being down about what you are (then they'll see / the bigger we are the harder they'll fall), I want to fucking dance on Monkey Boy's face flesh mask come justice day and piss all over the solid gold walls of the Pentagon to start with. ("Keeping You Alive," "Holy Water," and opening call to arms "Fire With Fire" respectively, to wit: Burn, baby, burn!)

            The fact that some half-clad skinny sylph and I were the only ones drunk and sweatdrop-flingin' dancin' to the Gossip in their afternoon slot at last year's Capital Hill Block Party—could only have been the time of day, I'm SURE (and no doubt M. would have been there too if she hadn't been drinking red cheap wine in the Hugo House bushes nearby, missing half the set, DUH)—scratching our heads but throwing limbs and grinding boxer steps all the same, just sort of adds to the fact that I can enjoy this band as much as any regular (either) KEXP commuter-listener or trust-fund zine-dyke. Other bands try to sound this way, but the Gossip are the Clash and Talking Heads of our times, combining the common people working class art schism pop art school proletarian protest of the former with the dandyish but fiercely funky pop art fashion roque of the latter. Nerd and mermaid combined, always the best aphrodisiac. The lyrics ain't Baudelaire but then Baudelaire went out renouncing Baudelaire and translating Poe hisself, horror monk style. Anyways.

            The too-deliberate title anthem is getting all the play on the aforementioned station, but it's next track "Jealous Girls" that I'm rapidly scorching on to CD-Rs for my friends, and there's plenty more nuggets of burning blue soul scrulpted from guitarist Brace and drummer Hannah's noggahyde bag of icepick stab rhythm pleasure anyways. Hannah! Shit, their best drummer yet, a vicious little rodeo queen and one of the sweetest people in the world I hear. Brace is like a punk-funk orchestra, WHO NEEDS A FUCKING BASS TO PLAY FUNK. I once doubted, and now I believe.