Gossip

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.

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.

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.