Gossip, A joyful Noise (Columbia)

Wednesday 16 May 2012

I had this dream where Girls Aloud reformed but Beth Ditto had taken Cheryl Cole's place in the line-up.

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Alan Morrison

The celebrity magazines and the oh-so-cool webzines were equally aghast. Before the dream faded, I was left with a final overpowering image: one of the most raucous voices and distinctive personalities in modern music – a voice that could not be diminished even by the sheer ubiquity of Standing In The Way Of Control – was being steamrollered by an ugly corporate machine into something flat, generic and unremarkable.

Then I realised the nightmare was a daydream, as I'd drifted off while listening to the new Gossip album, A Joyful Noise. Produced and co-written by Brian Higgins and his Xenomania outfit (responsible for the homogenisation of so much 21st-century chart-hungry pop via releases by Sugababes, The Saturdays, Dannii Minogue, etc), it's a further step away from the garage-soul-punk sound that was once Gossip's beating heart into bland mainstream territory where the ruling factor is the uniformity of radio playlists rather than the individuality of musicians. It's quite a feat to render Ditto soulless, but Higgins has done so.

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Gossip, A joyful Noise (Columbia)

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