The Gossip made their pop move with 2009's Rick Rubin-produced Music for Men, whose slick coat of gloss propelled the already-UK-famous Portland band into further heights. He tightened their bluesy sound into something that resembled dancepunk, funneling frontwoman Beth Ditto's unequaled soulful wail into clipped bursts of angst and joy. Despite the mechanical boxed-in feel of that album, the band kept their personality intact, producing their most listenable effort even if it wasn't always terribly original. But Music for Men wasn't exactly the bid for American stardom the trio (and their label) might have hoped for, and fifth album A Joyful Noise seems to address that directly. Here the reins are given over to UK pop mastermind Xenomania, perhaps best known for helming Sugababes and Girls Aloud's clever post-millennial bubblegum.
At first glance, it seems like business as usual: Opener "Melody Emergency" has Ditto bleating over a Led Zeppelin lurch more muscly than anything on Men. But when we get to first single "Perfect World", something feels very different. In some ways a stadium-sized rework of their biggest hit to date in "Heavy Cross", it shows how Xenomania's approach veers away from Rubin's. Where the latter turned the band's taut funk into a claustrophobic machine, here the sound is spread wide open, and the admittedly sparse band loses its concentrated strength-- an issue that plagues the rest of Joyful Noise. Xenomania's overbearing synth accents provide a new level of tactile texture, but they just as often overcook the already bland songs, so that tracks like "Into the Wild" sound like cheap jingles drained of the band's essential idiosyncrasies. Too often, Ditto's voice attempts to reach smooth plastic-soul Adele heights, stretching out syllables unnaturally, where before we could revel in her voice cracking into anguished screams.
Xenomania's touch begins to feel invasive over the course of the album, sometimes working in the band's favour-- the irresistibly slick "Move in the Right Direction"-- but more often drowning the group in detrimental cliches. "Get Lost" is an awful attempt at a *True Blue-*era Madonna pastiche, replete with a cringe-worthy chorus about "dancing to the beat of a different drum." Ditto's always been about pulling obvious bits of musical history and making them her own, but here she just feels completely out of ideas (see also her talk of "victims of love" on "I Won't Play"). The same goes for the confused "Get a Job", which aims to be a spiky electroclash jam with ill-advised preachy lyrics about a "rich girl" who "lives every day like a weekend." Hard to swallow coming from someone who lives as a touring artist.
All complaints aside, much like Music for Men, Joyful Noise is an inherently enjoyable pop album at its core, endearing even for all its missteps and pandering. It features Ditto's best-ever performance on the tender "Casualties of War", recalling Ray of Light-era Madonna (an easy touchstone for Gossip despite all their subversive politics) in its siren-like clarity of tone and voice. Her abrasive and relentless shtick is replaced by a tender vulnerability that's more heart-rending than we're used to from Gossip. "Casualties" is where Xenomania's expert studio hand works best, keeping the song restrained to a bubbling-under simmer that would have seemed impossible in the bulging veins and rushing heartbeats of their earlier work. It's enough to give hope for Gossip's future direction and their still unrealized potential as "pure" pop stars, but it's the sole promising moment on an album that ranges from average to disappointing. In the end, Joyful Noise feels like a stopgap.
