Rhapsody Reviews: Gossip, Music for Men

Music for Men is Gossip's coming out party in every sense of the term: It's their major label debut, their first album after becoming Kate Moss-befriending-hype-generators, and it's an announcement of their commitment to the alt-dance (life)style they first experimented with on Standing in the Way of Control. In short, this album is under a lot of pressure -- which it withstands rather admirably. The sleek dance beats -- this time drawing from both '80s pop and four-on-the-floor disco beats -- are polished to a pricier gold lamé sheen (courtesy of Rick Rubin), but are also more elegantly blended with their chicken-fried roots (see "Spare Me from the Mold"). Their melodies could do with a bit more variety: Beth Ditto either really enjoys a certain progression of notes, or her distinctive, full-throttle wail has a tendency to make every vocal line sound like, well, that distinctive, full-throttle Beth Ditto wail. And Kate Moss or no, the once-and-future scrappy garage punks are still probably a bit too queer (in all senses of the word) to hit the big-time Stateside. But they are in a rather fascinating position, poised somewhere between glitzy pop stardom and avant-garde underground. It's a position that makes for some very interesting musical choices: Though nothing on Music for Men really sounds like a conventional pop song, the album quotes from them liberally, couching, say, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" in the gradually building, minimalist keys-and-beats of "Love Long Distance" or Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It" in the straight-up hipster disco of "Love and Let Love." In fact, Music for Men is almost -- dare we say it -- kind of a camp, taking up and queering bits and pieces of a popular culture to which the band has an ambiguous relationship. In all, it's campy, danceable and political -- everything a fabulous coming out party should be.