A diamond has more open space in its crystal structure than matter. Ain’t that a thing? The majority of a diamond’s content is air. So it is with bands like Gorgeous. I don’t mean that in any pejorative sense, like their music is void of substance. Naye, I mean literally.
Gorgeous, the duo of Dana Lipperman and Judd Anderman, are masters of staccato, effortless engineers of the stop-start song structure. There is more silence than sound. You can feel the air between each snare hit, each guitar strum, each vocalised word. Gorgeous are in the league of bands like Palm, Requin and Mothers, bands who set out to be deconstructionists and indulge ashamedly in their experimentations with musical space.
Across their debut album Egg, the dynamic guitar of Lipperman is a destabilizing force, rarely settling into a comfortable groove, and often perilously pushing forward while being pulled back by Anderman’s grounding drumming. The first single “Shed Boys” enumerates this: Lipperman’s guitar is a squall enveloping the relentless drumming, furiously articulating the pathos behind Lipperman’s lyrics.
This week, we are proudly premiering Gorgeous’ second single ahead of the bands debut. In ‘Material World’, replete with its array of slack indie sensibilities and off-kilter Deerhoof-esque quirks, Gorgeous appear to be building a deliberately crooked castle. A contorted fortress. An asymmetric Mecca. Only in this castle, there is more open space than stone…
Gorgeous’s full length ‘Egg’ is out on November 8th. You can pre-order the album over at their Bandcamp page. Get into it, yo.