Gossip review, Real Power: Beth Ditto’s band are back with a bang but time has blunted the edges

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. After 12 years in the dirt, Beth Ditto, Hannah Blilie and Nathan Howdeshell are dusting the cobwebs off the disco ball to deliver their first album as a band since 2012’s A Joyful Noise. It’s a well-timed return, sprung on us amid an indie sleaze revival, the same music scene Gossip turned inside-out with their seminal record Standing in the Way of Control back in 2006. A bona fide belter, sleeker than their previous outings, Music for Men was their first record after signing with a major label and represented the band’s first legitimate bid for hometown glory – because while Ditto was gracing magazine covers in the UK, Gossip remained something of a cult act in the US. You might hope for something punchier than the slightly nondescript sloganeering offered on the folky “Light It Up”: “Start a fire/ Let it rage/ Burn it down.” The ecstatic thrash of Gossip’s early years does appear on the album – but perhaps, for day one fans at least, not frequently enough.