With the Rick Rubin–produced Music for Men, Gossip is poised to repeat its surprising U.K. success at home

Beth Ditto is the first to admit that her life has taken a decidedly surreal turn over the past couple of years. For the first half of this decade, her Portland-based band the Gossip toiled in semi-obscurity in the trenches of underground America, recording on the ultra-cheap and taking a DIY approach to touring that the Minutemen would have described as “jamming econo”.

That’s all changed. In the wake of 2006’s Standing in the Way of Control, Ditto, guitarist Brace Paine, and drummer Hannah Blilie suddenly found themselves embraced as the biggest no-name American band to thrill the U.K. since the circa-2001 White Stripes. On Music for Men, the new album by the group now known simply as Gossip, the trio addresses its newfound fame in the jungle-pop electro burner “Pop Goes the World”.

Featuring such lines as “Newspapers, magazines—we’ll turn them on their heads” and “For once we will have the final say/Goodbye to yesterday ’cause we know we’re here to stay,” the song sounds like a mission statement, a bold promise of the worldwide domination to come. But reached at a Denver tour stop, where she’s been knocked on her ass by a nasty-sounding cold, Ditto says that’s not entirely accurate.

“That song was written more about how surreal it was to be put in the situation that we were put in in England, Europe, and France,” she reveals, the soft lilt of her voice revealing her Arkansas roots. “Especially in the U.K.—it was so different from the United States. And about what a joke it was to be that kind of band that, for lack of a better word, was famous, or successful, if you will. Like, there’s paparazzi and you’re hanging out with people that you never thought you’d be hanging out with in your life.”

This list would include everyone from Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker to modelling legend Kate Moss. And if that didn’t boost the profile of Gossip in England, then what did was the fact that Ditto could be seen everywhere from multiple covers of NME to the guest seat of every English television show that mattered. While we’re on the subject of overexposure, let’s not forget her stint as an advice columnist for the Guardian and her fashion line for the English retailer Evans. As anyone who calls the U.K. home will attest, the singer is indeed more than almost famous. Which, naturally, has led to no shortage of encounters with living legends.

“We were in Grace Jones’s hotel room one night with all these people,” Ditto remembers, “and it was like, ”˜What am I doing here?’ But in a good way—it was amazing. So the song [”˜Pop Goes the World’] was about using all this surrealness to your best advantage. Like as long as you’ve got this attention, you’re going to do something positive with it.”

One of the biggest benefits of all this notoriety was attracting the attention of í¼ber-producer Rick Rubin, who caught Gossip in an L.A. nightclub and loved what he saw. (For a good idea of just how explosive the band is live, fire up YouTube and punch in “Standing in the Way of Control (live)”.) Rubin would subsequently sign on for Music for Men, the teaming yielding one of the best records of the year. Ditto didn’t take long to feel comfortable with Rubin, who wasted no time laying out his ground rules. To her delight, there were none.

“I used to think that I was really stupid because at fast-food jobs I couldn’t get the routine down—I didn’t understand it,” Ditto says. “Later, I realized I’m not the kind of person who needs a routine. In fact, I need the exact opposite. So working with him [Rubin], it was the most magical, perfect combination. There was no routine, there was no process. It was whatever happened on the day happened on the day.”

Much of the considerable brilliance of Music for Men is in the way Gossip has changed the rules of its own game. The band’s first couple of albums found Ditto playing the role of indie-blues belter, with Paine sounding like someone weaned on a turbocharged cocktail of DIY punk and Crossroads-brand garage rawk. Music for Men elevates things to a slick new level, one that is going to outrage narrow-minded purists as much as it will thrill forward-thinking hipsters. Over the course of 13 tracks, Gossip moves easily from jagged-edge funk (“Men in Love”) to baroque pop (“Vertical Rhythm”) to pneumatic house (“Love Long Distance”).

Paine still proves himself one of the most innovative—and entirely underrated—guitarists in the business, his slash-and-burn work at its most potent on the dance-floor dynamo “Heavy Cross”. But what’s most noticeable is that Gossip sounds more interested in hanging out at New York’s fabled Danceteria than the old CBGB. From the bass-driven neo-soul of “Love and Let Love” to the neon-lit new waver “Four Letter Word”, the songs are soaked with synths to the point where it’s hard to believe this is the same band that made 2001’s garage-grimed That’s Not What I Heard.

If there’s a downside to Music for Men, it’s that Gossip is about to watch its profile in America mushroom to a level that seemed unimaginable back in the DIY days. To understand why that concerns Ditto, it helps to know where she comes from. And, no, the answer isn’t as simple as Arkansas. Ditto was inspired to pick up the microphone by the riot grrrl movement, which would have a profound impact on her both politically and artistically.

Now that Music for Men finds Gossip on a major label, armed with an unapologetically accessible record, the band’s North American fan base is, in all probability, about to become a whole lot more mainstream. Gossip is going to find itself playing for more than queer-core disciples, Olympia-obsessed punks, and freak-flag flyers who can name every Bikini Kill song and every act that’s ever been signed to K Records. You don’t have to have read the Kurt Cobain bio Heavier Than Heaven to know that underground icons can end up horrified when they start attracting fans that they’d rather have nothing to do with in real life.

Considering all the surreality that she’s been through over the past couple of years, though, Ditto figures that she’s more than up to the challenge.

Noting that she’s a Pisces whose birthday is one day before the late Nirvana singer’s, Gossip’s frontwoman says, “Sometimes I feel like I know how misunderstood he [Cobain] must have felt and how hard that was for him. If I’m feeling that on this level, imagine how hard he must have been feeling it. I mean, Jesus Christ.”¦But I think the punks learned something from him—that it doesn’t matter who you are changing, it matters who you are empowering. And that’s something that you have to focus on .”

Gossip plays the Commodore Ballroom tonight (October 22).