Singular Artists and Mother today announce that chart-topping dance-rock trio Gossip will play The National Museum of Ireland, Collin Barracks, Dublin on Tuesday, 27th August 2024. Fronted by the electric Beth Ditto, Gossip are best known for their beloved indie anthem ‘Standing in the Way of Control’.
Real Power, pioneering American trio Gossip’s first album since 2012, finds Beth Ditto, Nathan Howdeshell and Hannah Blilie back together and reunited with super producer Rick Rubin, who helmed their 2009 opus Music For Men. The result is a comeback of magnum force that celebrates the galvanizing might of music, the joy of creative expression, and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma.
It was Rubin who coaxed the band back together again. What started out as a follow-up to Ditto’s 2017 solo debut Fake Sugar quickly turned into a Gossip reunion when Ditto and Howdeshell began collaborating again, under the tutelage of Rubin, at his home studio in Kauai just as the pandemic was hitting in 2019. The pair traveled back and forth throughout the pandemic, recording in marathon spurts of creativity. Hannah Blilie subsequently laid down the drums ratcheting up the immediacy of the eleven tracks.
Not only is there a mix of sonic textures and genres from propulsive rock to jubilant disco, as to be expected from a Gossip album, there’s also a mix of heady emotions on this inspired tour de force, encompassing the full range of the human experience.
“We all experienced a lot of deep loss, and we each turned 40 since we last recorded together,” says Ditto, “Those are such big moments in your lives.” Ditto and Blilie each got divorced, there were losses of close friends and family, and the world went through a pandemic since the band were last together, touring for the ten-year anniversary of Music For Men. It all only brought the band closer. “I’ve come to realize a lot of powerful things: that friendship is beautiful, that music is powerful, that we should never take life for granted,” says Howdeshell. “I can see the beauty of small things now.”
The timing is ripe for a Gossip reunion, and Real Power heralds a new maturity and renewed sense of purpose for the trio. “What a way to come back after years of being gone: to come back strong and with purpose and so much joy and gratitude, but also getting out a lot of that fuck-the-world kind of energy,” says Blille.
“When we began, so much about Gossip was about running away—that was always in the music,” says Ditto. “We survived. We came from nothing, and we got the fuck out of there. And to be here 20 years later and still making music together is just incredible.”
Punk revivalists Gossip join James Blunt, THE THE and Deacon Blue as the fourth headliner to be announced for Wider Than Pictures 2024 – Singular Artists’ exceptional series of shows that are fast becoming a staple of summer in Dublin.
LIVE AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRELAND COLLINS BARRACKS, DUBLIN
TUESDAY 27TH AUGUST 2024
TICKETS FROM €41 + BOOKING FEE
ON SALE FRIDAY 23RD FEBRUARY 2024, 9AM
FROM TICKETMASTER.IE & SINGULARARTISTS.IE