There’s a long and noble history of inward-gazing rock and roll heroes. Not Bon Jovi-style fist-pumping mooks or simpering, over-contemplative folkies, mind you. I’m talking about a unique few—Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch among them—whose work is fueled by the ongoing tension between the anthemic and the introspective.
Aaron Starkey, lead singer and guitarist for Seattle band Gibraltar, may not be filling arenas, but he’s inarguably cut from the same cloth as the aforementioned heroes. Without being masturbatory, Gibraltar’s songs and Starkey’s epic axework often soar with arena-worthy panoramic sweep. But his voice is a messy, if undeniably cathartic, thing. It’s an impassioned howl that sometimes turns into a sharp, jabbing yelp somewhere between Robert Smith and Fugazi’s straight-edge collective. It’s also an imperfectly perfect viaduct for Gibraltar’s great new full-length, Let’s Get Beautiful.
Gibraltar’s music enters larger-than-life, room-filling rock heroics into an uneasy and riveting truce with punk rock’s primal-scream intensity. Holly Houser’s piano often plays as much of a role as Starkey’s guitar on Let’s Get Beautiful, lending almost austere grandeur on some of the songs (“The First Ten Years”), and serving as the most forceful of percussion instruments on others. Houser’s keys dance elegantly with Starkey’s sensitive opening textures on “Songs for a Car” before the song kicks into a taut, forward-motion rock number. The guitar/piano interplay faintly suggests Bruce Springsteen bar rock being bum-rushed by post-punk goth.
Drummer Nick Biscardi and bassist Gwen Stubbs, meantime, provide enough muscle and finesse to drive the music back-and-forth between epic arena thunder, prog-rock, death-metal jackhammering, and neck-snapping hardcore without getting too indulgent. Producer Matt Bayles brings the mix together with a nigh-faultless touch that allows the band’s gifts for power and nuance to shine equally.
Starkey’s lyrical protagonists are raked over the coals psychically. “I’m working hard to find I’m not alone anymore,” he yowls on “Songs for a Car.” And he likens the weary resignation of a relationship’s contentiousness to “two bulls in a dance/locked horns too soon” on the surging rock waltz of “Zero-Sum.” Dark as it gets, though, none of it feels like simple whinging: there’s catharsis, and a righteous raging against the dying of the light, imbued throughout.
The album’s two high points epitomize how brilliantly Gibraltar brings introspection and fist-pumping fireworks together. The band transforms the semi-acoustic balladry of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get what I Want” into a Bowie-worthy theatrical show-stopper without sabotaging the song’s emotional pull. And the album’s first single “Cold” starts with pianos straight out of a Meat Loaf arena ballad before it shifts into an addictive, driving indie-rock anthem. “If you hold on tight, I can make it all right,” Starkey sings amidst a rush of power chords and almost sugary backing harmonies. Whether that line’s an offer for help or a cry of co-dependent desperation almost doesn’t matter. Like the rest of Let’s Get Beautiful, there’s power and redemption in there, any way you slice it.
Let’s Get Beautiful drops today, and Gibraltar plays their record release show tomorrow night, March 11, at Barboza. The very stacked bill includes opening sets from Head Like a Kite and Wiscon, so repeat after me: Get there early. Show starts at 7:00 P.M., and tickets can be purchased here.
