Photo via Gooseberry - Facebook
Gooseberry
Gooseberry
Simple Sucker, the forthcoming second LP from Brooklyn-based trio Gooseberry, adheres to its adjective. It is simple rock ‘n’ roll created by guitarist and lead singer Asa Daniels, bassist Will Hammond, and drummer Evin Rossington.
During a recent phone call, Daniels contrasted this simplicity with the approach taken on Gooseberry’s 2024 debut LP, All My Friends Are Cattle.
“On the first one, we wanted to show all the things that we could do,” he said. “There are elements of alt-rock, grunge, a Beatles style, more folk-rocky tunes. Because we had done that, we thought we had earned latitude to pick a world to go into, and we decided to make it more cohesively grunge.”
That grunge (or grungy: this isn’t Soundgarden) world still teems with variety. “Solitaire” is a wistful ballad of picking and strumming across a gradually befogged backdrop; “Gnash” is a one-two punch of proggy funk and blues-rock attitude; and “Gin Rummy” contrasts daydreaming verses with increasingly crunchy refrains.
Producer Colin Bryson, who oversaw All My Friends Are Cattle and the 2023 Validate Me EP, helped with the cohesion. Besides steady experience at the infamous Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, Bryson has worked with country artists like Willow Avalon and Zach Bryan.
“He can take some of that experience and apply it to what we do,” Daniels said. “He’s a good friend first and foremost, and we’ve built up a relationship where we can speak the same language when things are working and things aren’t working. He’s constantly learning and we’re constantly learning.”
Darkly Funny Side
Gooseberry has continued learning about, and leaning toward, the darkly funny side of narrative songs: “Durak,” a standout single, forcefully expresses the views of a privileged man romanticizing his younger self while revealing his current fears and hatreds.
The song could be unwittingly or willfully misunderstood, but Daniels remembered the responses to “One of the Good Ones,” an All My Friends Are Cattle track that inhabited, with ironic somberness, the mind of a bigot.
“We had people on the internet—where nothing is real and nobody can read—think we were xenophobic and hated immigrants,” he said. “The work should always speak for itself. Ultimately, it’s not going to stop me from writing the songs I’m going to write, and the majority of people seem to get it.”
“Durak” is a Russian word that roughly translates as “fool,” and foolishness of all kinds—romantic in “Daffodils” and “Bluff,” philosophical in “D.B. Cooper”—forms a theme of Simple Sucker.
“As I was developing the songs and we were playing them on the road, we began to look at them as a holistic unit,” Daniels said. “The idea of the fool came to the forefront, and we couldn’t look away from it. It became really powerful.”
For Daniels and Gooseberry, rock music itself has remained really powerful as well. “I have a strong affinity for different genres, but there’s something that brings me back to straightforward guitar rock,” Daniels said. “Maybe we’re just so dumb, but it always hits me the right way, and I don’t know much that beats that.”
Gooseberry will perform at Cactus Club on Thursday, July 23.
