This spring's Movement, the Gossip's third, is one hell of a record -- soulful and punk, distorted and gorgeously raw. It's the kind of art that always comes in from the outside, learns just enough of the rules to bust them up effectively and leaves the old "in" crowd gasping with its audacity. It's rough-edged and passionate through and through, and if you listen with your third ear, you can just about hear vocalist Beth Ditto leaning over to her cohorts Kathy Mendonca and Nathan Howdeshell and saying "That sounds too nice. Let's fuck it up a little."

Not surprisingly, Movement is the work of three kids who grew up about as far out of punk's orbit as you can get without a spacesuit, in a small, conservative town called Searcy, Arkansas. Nathan, the band's guitarist, recently talked to us about coming of age two hours from the nearest record store, discovering punk via a mix tape made by his cousin, learning to play a succession of thrift-store guitars, being the guy in a girl band and reaching the pinnacle of indie credibility -- an opening slot for Sonic Youth -- only to be heckled "tune your guitar" by drunken fratboy purists. It doesn't sound like it bothered Nathan much, but, hey, if you grew up an Arkansas skate-punk among a horde of buzzcut football players, it would take more than that to intimidate you, too. Here's hoping that The Gossip keeps on refusing to compromise and making great punk albums like Movement.

Splendid: Thanks for doing this. I love your new album. Is it rawer than your other stuff, in your opinion?

Nathan: It's a lot noisier. We wanted to make it a lot noisier. Yeah, it's rougher than the other records. I don't know. We're pleased about it. That it's different from the other records.

Splendid: Why? What's wrong with them?

Nathan: There's nothing wrong with them. It's just that we've changed a lot for the better.

Splendid: Tell me about how you record. Do you basically do it live?

Nathan: Yeah, it took three days.

Splendid: It's funny, because all the great punk records get done in no time.

Nathan: Totally. That's what we were taking our cue from, definitely. That's what we listen to, punk and old music. We're definitely drawing from punk and that, kind of, get in there and get out quick kind of thing.

Splendid: Yeah...have you ever worked on a song too much and it's gotten kind of flat?

Nathan: Yeah, we've done that. Also, we would play a song and say, nah, that song sounds too good. Let's fuck it up a little bit. Not too good, maybe, but we were trying not to make normal rock songs. If we thought the song sounded too polished, I would hit lots of wrong notes.

Splendid: You guys do this punk blues thing, which when you started was really unusual, but now there's all these other bands doing it. How do you feel about that?

Nathan: Well, I don't think there's really any element of blues on our new record. If there is, I think it's coming from Beth's voice more, which I think is cool, because she listens to records like Bessie Smith, Etta James and stuff like that. But I think it's more like a punk soul thing than blues, honestly, at least that's where we're coming from. I definitely think that there are a lot of bands doing that now. Obviously, with the White Stripes covering Robert Johnson songs, which is great...it's a trend. It will go away.

When we first started playing, we were doing something more like punk blues soul. At the time, there weren't many bands like that around. People just compared us to Bikini Kill because there were girls in the band. Now people are comparing us to the White Stripes. In a few more years, who knows what people will be comparing us to? It really has changed.

Splendid: What about the BellRays, do you like them?

Nathan: I've never heard that band.

Splendid: You should check them out, because they do a punk soul thing.

Nathan: They sound like MC5.

Splendid: Yeah, but the singer is just amazing. It's the same idea, the soul voice on top of the punk music. Similar to what you do, but completely different because the players are different. Didn't Beth start singing in church?

Nathan: Yeah, we were all raised in church, because we were from Arkansas, the Bible Belt. Yeah, she did a lot of singing in church. She never had voice lessons. Her mom helped her with her singing.

Splendid: It's interesting, because so many of the great soul singers started out in church.

Nathan: Yeah, we love Mahalia Jackson and all that stuff. All the good old gospel singing is amazing, I think. There's lots of soul in it.

Splendid: I just started listening to this Sacred Steel album. Have you heard any of this stuff?

Nathan: No, what is that?

Splendid: It's really neat. It's this old Pentecostal church music, but it uses electric steel guitar in it instead of organ, and it's unbelievably rocking. You don't think of church music being ...

Nathan: So rock.

Splendid: What was the music like in church when you were growing up?

Nathan: Super boring. I went to this little church where it was all really old people and me. I was really like "na-na-na", super bland. There were some of the surrounding black churches that supposedly had amazing choirs, that got really wild. That Sacred Steel was Pentecostal?

Splendid: Yeah, in Florida.

Nathan: Because I think Pentecostals tend to be a little wilder in their -- they're the ones that will be speaking in tongues and all that...

Splendid: Yeah, and snakes.

Nathan: I heard the Pentecostal choirs were totally crazy and everybody would dance around. Clap their hands. That sounds exciting to me. But personally, our churches were pretty tame. They were Southern churches. There were no PAs or anything. People didn't just yell. You had to sing stuff, but it was boring.

Splendid: How'd you get started with punk? There must not have been any good radio stations where you were.

Nathan: No, there was nothing. There was a record store two hours away. I got into punk because my cousin made a mix tape. He lived in Louisiana. He put Sonic Youth on it, the Germs, the Ramones.

Splendid: Cool.

Nathan: And then I started skateboarding and I bought thrash records. There was a lot, at the time it was very punk-centric. It was very punk to be a skater. So I got into punk that way and got into modern stuff as well as the old stuff.

Splendid: So, did you like it immediately? Because it must have sounded pretty strange if you had never heard it.

Nathan: Some of it, it did sound weird when I first heard it. I remember hearing the Ramones and thinking, "this is cool," and I remember Sonic Youth -- this would have been off Dirty so that was cool. And then I remember hearing...he taped me something like, uh, maybe it was the Germs, and I totally thought it was insane. I remember hearing the Germs, and I thought it was a girl that was singing, and I thought "What's going on?" It was a live recording. Everyone went crazy. And I heard the Melvins, and I was like, "What is this?"

Splendid: I remember the first time I heard the Sex Pistols and I was like "Eew."

Nathan: The first time I heard -- I heard the Velvet Underground from him, too, but he taped me this European, like "Black Angel Death Song," so it was a little freaked out and psychedelicized and I was scaaared.

Splendid: Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about the small town thing. I grew up in a small town, too.

Nathan: Where at?

Splendid: Indiana. So, the north, but probably still similar in some ways.

Nathan: Oh yeah.

Splendid: So I grew up there, and then I moved to New York, and I noticed that all of the interesting people in New York were people who had grown up in these tiny little towns and then gotten the hell out.

Nathan: We talk about this a lot, because all of our friends who come from small towns are extremely talented. And a lot of the people I know in big cities who are doing the crazy stuff are people who came from small towns. I think it's because they're just not jaded. When you live in a small town for 18 years, it kind of drives you crazy. Especially when you're an art type and you crave art or underground community and you can't get it. So when you move away to where it's available, you just go crazy. At least I have.

Splendid: I also think that for people who grow up in New York, being into punk rock is almost like a fashion statement.

Nathan: Yeah, totally.

Splendid: But it's more of a risk if you come from a smaller town.

Nathan: I used to get yelled at every day of my life. All of us, in school, there was harassment. You know, we were super, we were art punks, dressed super weird. We just put duct tape all over our shirts. Stuff like that, just because we hated our surroundings so much. We wanted to show people that we were different from them. It was horrible. We were like, fuck this shit. It was so boring and so horrible. Everyone there was like racist, homophobic assholes, who just want to beat you up.

Splendid: Yeah, but granting all the negatives and how horrible and painful it is growing up, you think there's maybe a positive?

Nathan: Definitely. I think the positive is that I'm doing stuff -- like I'm in five different bands. I'm publishing five different zines. I'm doing a record label. If I grew up here, I probably wouldn't be so productive because I'd have my whole life to hang out with like-minded people. Now that I'm here and have the ability to put out records and do things that people buy, do art that people are interested in, play music with people, there's no reason not to. And I go to shows all the time. None of us are really jaded, whereas a lot of people who have always lived here are like, oh yeah, we'll go later. There's a good show happening and no one goes. Or there's a great art show and no one goes, just because they've seen it already. Whereas for us, we were in Arkansas for 18 years.

Splendid: Now, where is Searcy?

Nathan: Northeast.

Splendid: My brother used to live in Arkansas, right near where Wal-Mart is headquartered.

Nathan: Oh, yeah, yeah, is it Fayetteville?

Splendid: It's near there. I think it's a little south of there. I don't know. He's conservative, so it was fine for him. But I think there's sort of a case for, it's painful, but almost the more repressed a situation is, the better the art is that comes out of it.

Nathan: Oh, yeah. You think about all those great blues records. Those guys were about to get killed every day. Or they had killed people, you know? Like Skip James killed people. They were living under horrible conditions, but the music was so uplifting. Their lives were so horrible. I'm not comparing us to that at all, because they had it a lot worse than we did. But I definitely think that from repressed areas always comes the best music, because that's what they have to do to survive.

Splendid: Yeah. You're in Die Monitr Batss?

Nathan: Yes.

Splendid: I just heard a song from that on the Dim Mak Sampler -- "Spread Your Legs".

Nathan: Cool.

Splendid: Yeah, it's very cool. It's very different from The Gossip. Are you in other bands besides that?

Nathan: I play in a band called Deep Jil. It's just me doing electro-punk. And then Die Monitr Bats. And me and Beth are also in a band called Cold War. I play piano and she sings. It's Nico noise, Nina Simone kind of thing.

Splendid: So what do you get out of being in a bunch of bands?

Nathan: Just so I don't get bored. I'm obsessed with playing music. I could do it all the time. It's just what I like. We're always playing music. I can't really explain it. It's just something I always do. I do lots of other stuff. I do lots of art. I do lots of writing for magazines.

Splendid: Who are you writing for?

Nathan: Just like friends' magazines.

Splendid: Fiction or nonfiction?

Nathan: I do some photos and articles on things that are interesting. I do write fiction. I do a lot of fiction fanzine. I do some music underground, super obscure records. I mostly write music reviews.

Splendid: Cool. I wanted to talk about some of the songs on Movement. I really like "Lesson Learned".

Nathan: That's funny. We never play that song, ever. I don't think we've ever played it.

Splendid: Why? I love that song. What's so cool about it is that it's about not being a Barbie doll.

Nathan: Yeah, totally, it is. We always forget about that song. When we were recording it, the guy who was recording us was like, this is such a Gary Glitter song. It's weird because I don't think I've ever heard Gary Glitter.

Splendid: But if you've ever been to a sports event, you must have heard "Rock and Roll".

Nathan: Yeah, I guess. But it sounds like that. It's kind of embarrassing. That song came together in like two minutes. It's a really weird tuning. My guitar is so crappy and fragile -- all my guitars are beat-up pawn shop guitars. I had to record that song on a different guitar than any of the other songs on the album, because the tuning is so severely low, the strings are just hanging on by a thread.

Splendid: You know, I wanted to ask you about that, because you don't have a bass in your band, and I guess that's sort of fashionable right now, but it sounds like you do a lot of the time.

Nathan: Well, my guitar tunings are wild. They're super all over the place. Every song is a different tuning. I only have four strings.

Splendid: Which strings? Did you take off the two high ones?

Nathan: Yeah, I take two of the high ones off, because I don't need them, and it's fun to play with just four strings. What happened was, we played this show with Sonic Youth, and my guitar fell off and two of the strings busted off, and then I played the rest of the show like that. I don't use those strings, so I never even put them back on. So that's the story about that.

All the tunings are different on the record. I started doing that tuning just because the music I listened to, none of it is very standard. The music that influences me in the Gossip is like, I listen to a lot of weirder, expressionist, no wave music. Like a lot of Teenage Jesus (Lydia Lunch's first band) and DNA (with Arto Lindsay). Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore and weird stuff like Wirehouse and Suicide. The guitars, like I'm interested in those sounds, in emulating those sounds.

And then there's also old bands I listen to when we do more traditional stuff.

Splendid: Would you like to get more experimental? Your sound is pretty straightforward, isn't it?

Nathan: Yeah, we definitely are experimental. The thing about our band is there's something we're doing that's different, but when it gets recorded it sounds more traditional. There's lots of stuff that we do in the studio that you don't see and it's pretty wild -- just a lot of stuff like I'll play my guitar with a hammer or a drumstick. The last song on the record -- well, there's the secret song and that's just me with my guitar turned all the way up hitting it with a hammer. There's the song before that with the high hat and I'm playing the high hat while I play guitar with a hammer. You know, there's all sorts of things like that that you don't really know about until you see us play live. It's a bit wilder. A lot of my other bands are super wild guitar experimental stuff, but (with) The Gossip, I don't want that to take over. I just kind of lay back and let Beth do her thing, work around her, you know. But Beth is definitely into being more experimental. We'll play a tune, and she'll say no, that guitar part is too normal or something. And I'll say yeah, you're right and we'll change it up. We don't want to be like a rock band.

Splendid: There's a ton of those around these days.

Nathan: Yeah, we don't want to be like a normal guitar chord, normal tuned-sounding. Bands like The Black Keys, they are just like these dudes that are just very good at their guitars. That's not what we want to be.

Splendid: You know, I don't like The Black Keys, either.

Nathan: I hate them. I'm not talking about the people in the band.

Splendid: Yeah, they're probably nice people, but it's like this very southern boogie thing, and I just hated that when I was growing up, you know...

Nathan: It makes me so mad when I see people lump us in with those bands, because this isn't punk at all. It's like two dudes playing guitar really good, and there's nothing dangerous about that at all.

Splendid: I saw them open for Sleater-Kinney and it reminded me of Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top and stuff that makes my skin crawl.

Nathan: Yeah, totally, it's like stuff that racist kids would listen to and then beat me up. To me, The Black Keys, I just can't get into it, because it's just guys on stage moving around, playing their guitars really well. It's a lot different...there's no sort of visual or sonic assault at all, which is what we hope to accomplish, at least live.

Splendid: Tell me about your live show.

Nathan: It's pretty -- we would like to go wild, I guess, make it unconventional, noisy, loud and fast. Very punk-inspired.

Splendid: Is it different every time?

Nathan: We do a lot of different things. We try to spice it up. Sometimes we'll do a noise version of a song, and on our last tour, the one that we did with the Chromatics, we did "I Wanna Be Your Dog" every night with them, and the other band that was playing.

Splendid: I love that song.

Nathan: Yeah, we did the song with the Chromatics and they got on the stage with their equipment, and then the first band, if they were our friends, would come up, too. We'd play for ten minutes and it would be just pure feedback. Craziness. There's a lot of craziness that would happen. People would get on stage and start playing bass and fire extinguishers would go off, like firecrackers, stuff like that. A lot of punk stuff that is lacking in shows these days. When you pay $8.00 for a show and it's boring...Even if you don't like us, maybe you'll like some of the live stuff that we're doing.

Splendid: It must be hard going out night after night and doing the same show. You just have to work to make it interesting for yourselves.

Nathan: Totally. I have ADD, so I get bored easily. We've got to do something, or I'll just be bored. We don't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen, just because ...fuck that. A punk band is a thing for kids. You should try something new and exciting.

Splendid: What's it like being a guy in a band that a lot of people see as a woman's band or a feminist band?

Nathan: How does it feel?

Splendid: Yeah.

Nathan: It's awesome. I love it. I'd much rather be in a band with girls than guys.

Splendid: Have you been in a band with guys?

Nathan: Yeah, the Monitr Batss is three guys and a girl. That's the only band I'm in with guys, I guess. All the rest are with girls.

Splendid: What's the difference?

Nathan: I think girls can, not to be whatever, but girls usually... it's all about competition with guys, usually. Even punk dudes, you'd think they're cool, but they'll try to be controlling. Whereas being in a band with girls...everyone pitches in. It's a family thing. Being in a band with guys, maybe it's because I'm from Arkansas and every guy there is an asshole, but ...

Splendid: Surely not every guy in Arkansas...

Nathan: No, not at all. But you know what I mean, playing with guys there was just a total bummer for me. And playing with girls is different. It's a good experience. Everyone has been really cool and laid back. It happens that a lot of time girls ask me to play in their bands, so ...guys are just as good, too, but girls tend to be a lot less weird about certain things. A lot of guys are all about equipment. I don't know anything about equipment. I don't even know how to play guitar. I don't know anything about chords. I just goof around. I'm not saying that girls don't know anything about guitars or equipment. Some of them know way more than me.

Splendid: Yeah. I think there are people -- guys and girls -- all along the spectrum, but I think you're right, there is a difference. Does it bother you that a lot of people focus on the fact that Beth is gay? Does that get more attention than it should?

Nathan: Well, yeah, maybe. Beth considers herself queer. She's dating a boy, you know -- a tranny boy that's a girl, so that's why she says "he" a lot on the record. Some of our fans may be mad about that, which I think is totally stupid and ridiculous. Some of the girls who like our band are super-lesbians. There's definitely a lesbian aspect to our band. But Beth doesn't consider herself a lesbian. She considers herself queer. Me and Kathy are straight. We're supportive of that, of course. And I think that if that helps people who maybe feel alone, then that's what we're about. It's all about community.

Splendid: It seems like a lot of the men who write about music, if there's going to be a girl in a band, she'd better be a sex object, because otherwise they don't really know what to do with her. Do you think that's something that applies to your band?

Nathan: Well, a lot of people actually do consider Beth a sex symbol. It's something that hounds her. She hates it. It's one of those thing that -- it's just whatever. A lot of people do consider her a sex symbol. People write about our shows, and they say, "Beth is so sexy." She gets embarrassed, you know? We are so not, like, sexy people.

Splendid: Your music is sexy.

Nathan: Yeah, I guess it has a swagger to it, or whatever. But we're totally not. If you saw us, you see that we're like really nerds. Sexy is...I don't know...it plays a part in the music. It comes out.

Splendid: Well, I think all rock has that in it.

Nathan: Yeah. It does. If it's dangerous it does. I think that listening to stuff like the Stooges -- they were such a sexy band. The chords, they way they're played, and the drums. And then even weird stuff, early Sonic Youth is totally sexy. David Bowie and stuff like that.

Splendid: Yeah. I think that a lot of the funk stuff is really sexual.

Nathan: Like '70s funk stuff?

Splendid: Yeah, like Parliament and Funkadelic.

Nathan: Yeah, that's just pure rhythm.

Splendid: Yeah, how can you resist? Uhm, I know you have a live album coming out. Do you want to talk about that?

Nathan: The story of that may make you not want to buy it. It was recorded -- every time we go on tour people send us these live videotapes for some reason. I was watching them, and I thought, we should put out a live record. But every time we've tried to record our show, it just sounds really sucky. And we recorded this show in New York with the Chromatics, and it was really good. Beth's voice was really solid, and our guitar sounded super-fucked up. It's pretty lo-fi and crazy, but I ran the VCR into my tape player and just hit play/record. And recorded it onto a cassette tape from the VCR.

Splendid: Wow. So how's it sound?

Nathan: Pretty crazy. If you've got that Dim Mak sampler...

Splendid: Yeah, that's right. There was a live Gossip song on it. I thought it sounded good. Really raw and stripped down...

Nathan: It turned out really good, but every time I tell people that story, they're like "oh my god, it must sound horrible."

Splendid: Where were you in New York when you did it?

Nathan: The Knitting Factory. I thought that recording sounded cool because of the audience. The audience goes crazy at all these different parts of the record, really loud.

Splendid: What are your fans like? Mostly girls?

Nathan: It depends. Honestly, that's a mystery to me. I think a lot of bands have a certain audience. A lot of the bands we play with have a certain sound. You can always tell who's there to see the other band. With us, we'll be playing and I'll be looking, and I'll see a bunch of 15-year-old riot girls and then I'll see a 32-year-old free jazz dude, and then I'll see an indie rock couple that's like 22, maybe a rocker guy. It's really different.

Splendid: Well, that's good -- that means you appeal to a lot of different kinds of people.

Nathan: Yeah. That makes me feel good that we're not just playing to riot girls or just rocker dudes. It's a cool mix. It's important to me that we aren't a band that can only play for certain people. All of our records are different. And all of our records will continue to be different because that's the way we are as a band. Who knows what the next record will sound like? The guitar will either be pure feedback or it will be bass and no guitar.

Splendid: So you know this guy that added the bass to the White Stripes record? This guy from Redd Kross, he rerecorded some of the White Stripes' songs and added his own bass. What do you think about that? I think the White Stripes were sort of into it, but it seems almost like vandalism.

Nathan: That's cool that they're not suing him or something.

Splendid: Yeah, well, you know, what do they have to lose?

Nathan: Totally.

Splendid: So do you ever look out at an audience and say, "Oh, my god, we can't play for these people." Are there people that you know by looking that they're not going to appreciate what you're doing?

Nathan: Well, back to that Sonic Youth show, actually. That's probably one of the biggest shows we've ever played. It was massive. There were people there who hated us. It was like these weird jocks. You would think that Sonic Youth's audience would be ... I mean, they weren't ...the majority of them were pretty cool. But there were people there who obviously there because they heard Kurt Cobain liked Sonic Youth or something.

Splendid: I think they attract a fair number of guitar Trekkies.

Nathan: Totally. Definitely. And these people were calling Beth a fat ass and yelling at me, "Tune your guitar." Stuff like that. And the sound guys -- the sound guys were the worst. They were harassing us non-stop. "Where's your bass?" Freaking out that we didn't have a bass. Freaking out that Kathy didn't have a whole drum set. And just freaking out so bad. They were like, "You guys get to play in front of 15,000 people and you don't bring your own drum set." They hated us. Sonic Youth were the only people there that liked us.

Splendid: That must have been a while ago?

Nathan: That was a long time ago.

Splendid: So what are you going to do next after the tour?

Nathan: We're going to go to England. That will be exciting.

Splendid: Have you been there before?

Nathan: We went there two years ago. It was cool. People were really into it. And I heard that, at the time, that kids were not into punk in England. It was a very electro-based scene. But now it's way more punk and rock than it used to be.

Splendid: Are you going to Europe, too, or just the UK?

Nathan: Just the UK, but it ought to be really fun. And then we're recording new stuff for various seven-inches, compilations and stuff. We'll probably record a new one in maybe a year.