The Brooklyn trio return with another dose of riff-heavy alternative rock ahead of their sophomore album Simple Sucker, arriving September 25.
New York has supposedly killed guitar music approximately once every few years.
Somebody should probably tell Gooseberry.
The Brooklyn alt-rock trio—Asa Daniels on guitar and vocals, Evin Rossington on drums and Will Hammond on bass—are back with “D.B. Cooper,” the latest release ahead of their sophomore album Simple Sucker, arriving September 25.
And even before getting into the music, you have to appreciate an alt-rock band naming a song after the mysterious man who hijacked a plane in 1971, parachuted into the night with ransom money and proceeded to become one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries.
It’s an appropriately strange name for a band whose music isn’t particularly interested in behaving politely.
Gooseberry have been carving out their place in New York’s alternative scene through a combination of indie rock, blues and the kind of guitar-forward swagger that immediately invites comparisons to bands like Queens of the Stone Age, The White Stripes and Soundgarden.
But the more interesting context is that they’re doing it now.
In Brooklyn.
At a moment when the conversation around rock music seems permanently caught between announcing its death and announcing its resurrection.
Gooseberry appear considerably less interested in either conversation than in simply turning the amps up.
New York Still Has Guitars
There’s something funny about how frequently guitar music needs to be declared alive.
Nobody regularly publishes investigations into whether synthesizers have survived.
Yet guitars apparently require periodic wellness checks.
Gooseberry recently appeared in a Guitar World feature highlighting 15 young bands demonstrating that guitar music remains alive in New York City.
For anyone actually moving through the city’s smaller venues, rehearsal spaces and independent scenes, this probably isn’t shocking information.
Rock didn’t disappear.
Its center of gravity changed.
The monoculture became scenes.
The giant rock-star mythology became smaller rooms, independent releases and bands building audiences from the ground up.
That’s the ecosystem Gooseberry have been moving through.
And “D.B. Cooper” arrives as another marker of a band increasingly defining what its version of modern alternative rock looks like.
Meet “D.B. Cooper”
Even without overcomplicating the reference, the title carries baggage.
Mystery.
Escape.
American mythology.
A man disappearing into the night and becoming more legend than person.
It’s the kind of phrase that already sounds like it should be written on the back of a leather jacket.
For Gooseberry, it also makes an effective entry point into the world surrounding Simple Sucker.
The band’s sound pulls from recognizable rock traditions without presenting itself as a museum piece.
There’s blues in the foundation.
Indie rock in the architecture.
Alternative rock in the weight.
And riffs are allowed to behave like riffs rather than apologizing for taking up space.
That’s increasingly what makes Gooseberry compelling within the current New York landscape.
They’re not treating guitar music as something that needs rescuing.
They’re treating it as something that’s still useful.
The Swagger Matters
The comparisons surrounding Gooseberry—Queens of the Stone Age, The White Stripes, Soundgarden—share an obvious characteristic beyond guitars.
Physicality.
This is music built around the idea that a riff can change the temperature of a room.
That drums should move air.
That bass should do more than politely support the arrangement.
That rock music can be smart without becoming afraid of swagger.
Gooseberry operate in that territory.
And in an era where so much music is experienced individually through headphones, feeds and fifteen-second fragments, there’s something increasingly appealing about bands making music that seems designed around the physical fact of several people playing together.
Three musicians.
Guitar.
Bass.
Drums.
Volume.
Sometimes the ancient technology still works.
Simple Sucker Is Almost Here
“D.B. Cooper” also arrives at an important moment for Gooseberry.
Their sophomore LP Simple Sucker lands September 25, moving the band into the next stage of a career already closely tied to New York’s alternative community.
Second albums carry their own peculiar pressure.
A debut can introduce you.
The follow-up starts answering a more difficult question:
What exactly are you building?
For Gooseberry, “D.B. Cooper” offers another glimpse of a band leaning into the characteristics that have made them increasingly visible in the first place rather than sanding them away.
Riffs.
Blues.
Alternative rock.
Swagger.
The chemistry of a trio.
A little mystery certainly doesn’t hurt.
Maybe Guitar Music Never Needed Saving
The recurring question of whether guitar music is “alive” has always been slightly misleading.
Genres rarely disappear.
Attention does.
The mainstream moves somewhere else.
Scenes mutate.
Young musicians discover old records without particularly caring whether the cultural conversation has declared those sounds fashionable again.
Then they make something with them.
Gooseberry are part of that continuum.
They’re a Brooklyn band taking the vocabulary of blues and alternative rock and using it in the present tense.
No resurrection required.
No eulogy either.
“D.B. Cooper” is out now.
Simple Sucker arrives September 25.
And somewhere in Brooklyn, despite decades of reports to the contrary, people are apparently still plugging guitars into amplifiers.
Good.
