[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]

I tried to get some nascent Team T’ers to blog this one but both of them wussed out. WUSSES! So the burden falls to me, and lo it is a heavy one, as heavy as 15 minutes spent running my mouth into this text box. But I digress.

This show was good, if a little long for me. The Gossip were outstanding. I saw them a couple nights before at Dunes. They were a little rusty, which makes sense given that was their first time performing the new songs off their forthcoming album, which they had just finished recording a couple days before. The Berbati’s show was tight though. Beth Ditto sings with bale force, knocking all cynicism to the walls, barelling down on your very soul. She is one of the best performers in indie rock, hands down. Seeing her makes you wonder if there even are any other real performers out there, such is the order of magnitude by which she breathes fire and screams dirt on the skinny-tie masses (what?). Ironically, The Gossip seem to be moving towards the least soulful corner of that crowded room, that of “dancepunk” or whatever we’re calling the Rapture now. Yeah, there’s neo-disco riffs now, some of which I’m betting Nathan (the guitarist) picked up at his killer Suicide Club DJ nights at the aforementioned Dunes (that other Gossip show was actually part of Suicide Club, come to think of it). Mostly it works – transforming Ditto from the swamp blues mama we know to the classy disco diva she might be – but sometimes it sounds lite and unfunky. Oh yeah, and the new drummer is great. She bangs the living shit out of those drums and looks stoked to be there.

I saw Stereo Total two times in close succession a couple years ago, both very very fun shows. This show was fun, but the crowd was less excited, and I got tired towards the end of it. The songs started sounding a little samey, which I don’t remember happening before. I think maybe it was a longer set. Also the other times I saw them they built up slowly from purely synth songs to more rock performance style, which lent a nice little story-arc to the whole thing. This time the songs were more mixed up. They’re still wonderful tho, and I’ll def be seeing them next time they’re in town.