In an exclusive interview, Sarah and Ollie of Minnesota-based Gospel Gossip talk about songwriting inspiration, studio recording and the music industry.
[indiesssance]
Shadows are Bent and Lucky Lemmings are two strong tracks to represent A-side and B-side, respectively. Gospel Gossip has an original sound that overshadows comparisons to other bands.
Creative blocks can be frustrating; depressing at times. Are there any particular bands that stir up creative juices - or sweep out the cobwebs - as a muse? Are there any bands that stand out as a primary source of inspiration for your songwriting?
[sarah]
I don't know. It's too easy to run too far in the direction of "inspiration." I'm most blocked when I become too attached to the superficial qualities of a band or sound, like lyrics or melody or structure. Those things are hypnotic but with respect [to] songs themselves, meaningless. Being inspired is about inhaling a feeling and breathing it back out. I wrote the start of Lucky Lemmings after lying on my floor listening to Heroin [by The Velvet Underground] repeatedly for three hours. But that doesn't mean they sound alike or are about the same thing. That said, there still are albums that we collectively love. Psychocandy, Daydream Nation, and Horses are a few of those.
[ollie]
We're big Talking Heads fans too. True Stories was an inspiring movie for all of us. Speaking of...
[indiessance]
Which novels or movies inspire you? Any particular authors?
[sarah]
Ollie and I just saw I'm Not There by Todd Hayes, and it's pretty incredible. There are a lot of references to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, which makes sense, and that's also another one of my favorites. I would put Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch on the top of my fail-proof filmmaker list. Authors... Virginia Woolf will never cease to amaze me, and T.S. Eliot, but then again he's a poet. William S. Burroughs is pretty great for a trip.
[ollie]
All the late-60's counter culture films are very influential for us as well.
[indiessance]
Are there any producers or sound engineers who have helped to shape or develop your sound?
[sarah]
Neil Weir, he's a Minneapolis guy, mixed our album. He understood where we were coming from and is unique in the way that he's not so crazy about digital post-production effects, as so many producers these days seem to be. He went ahead and used analog effects, like tape delay, to really hone out our sound.
[ollie]
Yeah, it was this Roland RE -150 Space Echo that he bought in Northfield (of all places). It was a big box with a bunch of VU meters, looked like it was from the early 80's. We used it on all the songs as a post-production effect. The ambient jangling sound on Shadows Are Bent is a good example. We also titled two songs after the effect. But yeah, it really saved us because we got into a terrible situation with the guy we tracked with, and it turned out to be difficult to expand our sound when we went to Neil. So there's a lot of tension between experimentation and cookie-cutter engineering.
[indiessance]
I noticed that you are scheduled to play at First Avenue on December 13th, a venue that has been a rock-it launch pad for Twin Cities-based bands for decades - the CBGB of Minneapolis. The show is a CD release party for your latest project. Are you excited about the gig? Has that show put a buzz in the group's busy hive?
[sarah]
We're playing 7th Street Entry, not First Avenue proper, but still it's fabulous. It's our favorite venue in Minneapolis; the sound is incredible, and the atmosphere perfect. It's just a small black black room.
[ollie]
The Entry's just as historically important. The Replacements and Husker Du played there often. Prince got his start there. A bunch of great national bands play there too. First Ave. is too scary to play. We haven't done it yet, but it's huge. It looks exactly the way [it] does in Purple Rain.
[indiessance]
In your message, you noted 'shoegaze' and 'New Order' as general tags for comparison. There are places where I have caught a The Cure vibe, e.g. 1:37 into the 'Lucky Lemmings' MP3 - mostly from the slight dissonant tremble in Sarah's vocal, but also from the layers of electric guitar. Speaking of which, how are you able to emulate such layering live - with a three-piece band?
[sarah]
We just added a synth player, actually, and she's helped a bit to fill things out, although I wouldn't say that sparseness in sound was ever an issue to begin with. We did do some overdubbing on the album, but even on Lucky Lemmings I don't think there are ever any more than two guitars going at once. When we're live I use a digital delay pedal, which can really help to take the sound and explode it.
[ollie]
The great thing about that song is that it's always different when we play it. That also worried us when we were recording it. We thought it was going to be really difficult and untrue to the way we play it live. But I'm happy; it's my favorite on the album. And yes, there are a bunch of references in the song. I don't think we had the Cure in mind. The drums in the middle of the song are a rip off of Age of Consent [by New Order]. Same with the fills I do toward the end: those are taken from Patti Smith's Free Money. Anyway, we're not embarrassed about our influences, but we also don't make our music live through them. They're kind of like terse, offhanded comments, allusions, things to allow our music to go somewhere else.
[indiessance]
In addition to the Twin Cities music scene, are there any cities with scenes that you really liked? Which is your favorite city to perform in, outside of Minneapolis?
[sarah]
We've only been on tour once, and it wasn't much, just some house shows and art collectives up the west coast. In Chico we were going to play this place called the Crux Collective, and Justin was following our van on his motorcycle and ended up getting stranded somewhere around San Fransisco, I think. We panicked, but someone at the collective stepped up to fill in on bass. That was I think one of the worst and most honest shows we've ever played.
[ollie]
Seattle and Vancouver were fun... really great music Cities. I remember a death metal band opened for us in L.A.
[indiessance]
Enough times, in music reviews, the reader encounters an avalanche of sonic comparisons - this can be misleading, even confusing. Have you come across any sonic comparisons to GG that might make you scratch your head?
[sarah]
We haven't really been reviewed yet. Although once some drunken guy said we sounded like U2. That was off-putting.
[ollie]
I could see where that guy was coming from. The weirdest one I've heard yet was today: someone on a message board said we were a shitty version of the Beatles or something. I think we've got more balls than the Beatles because we can make louder music with fewer genitalia.
[indiessance]
It is clear that your band's sound has jelled. It can take years for a band to get that tight. How did GG first come together? How long has the band been in its current configuration of Sarah, Justin and Ollie?
[sarah]
I had been writing songs for a while when I met Ollie at Carleton. We'd drink whiskey and played in my dorm laundry room from time to time. A few months of that got old, so we brought Justin in. He and Ollie played in a hardcore band called Rainbow Magical. We'd been playing together for a little less than a year when we recorded the album, so now I guess we've been together for almost a year and half. And now we have a new member, Deanna, as I mentioned.
[indiessance]
There are many new bands out there that are in the process of building a fan base. Such bands rely on file sharing as a means of exposing even more listeners to their music. But - as well as a blessing - file sharing has proven to be a curse.
Based on your experiences in an indie band, how do you feel about the current state of the music industry, with the pervasive manifestation of illegal file sharing, and major labels shifting into survival mode? What steps has GG taken in order to survive as a band in this crazy music industry environment?
[sarah]
Some bands understand that art and expression aren't about ownership, and those are the bands that will survive, or at least matter. It's obvious that the music industry is floundering, but it's also obvious that the major labels are still making money. Britney Spears is paid over $700,000 every month and she sees only pennies from album sales. Greed fuels corporate industry, and the music business is no exception. It hasn't yet been able to reconcile with itself that perhaps music isn't just another commercial commodity to be bought and sold, as they've been treating it to be for so many decades. They can't stop file sharing because people don't think they need to pay money for music anymore. They can use lawsuits to frighten people but not to make them buy worthless albums. If they need to make millions they need to find a way apart from selling music, because (hopefully) they're never again going to convince the populace that a compact disc is worth $15.
[indiessance]
If I were to take a guess, it sounds as if your tracks were laid out with an 8-track recorder on 1/2" media. What make-model of recorder did you actually use? Any other equipment you might like to mention? e.g. guitar pedals.
[sarah]
Everything was actually tracked digitally with Protools. Maybe the analog echo and reverb techniques that I already mentioned are what are giving you that feel. My delay pedal is a Boss DD-6. It's priceless. I use a Metal Muff for distortion, and that's it. A lot of the best sounds come out of twisting the guitar around, bending the bridge, and so on. Justin uses a DD-3 and a Boss Bass Overdrive.
[indiessance]
I doubt that your band will ever receive a scathing review. Have the critics been writing nice things so far?
[sarah]
You're the first. Set the bar high.
profile @ myspace.com
mp3 @ rabbitsliketrumpets.typepad.com (shadows are bent - gospel gossip)
mp3 @ rabbitsliketrumpets.typepad.com (lucky lemmings - gospel gossip)
mp3 @ rabbitsliketrumpets.typepad.com (wind - gospel gossip)
blog aggregator @ hypem.com
interview @ carleton.edu
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