Drawn from the imagination of Phil Pierce of Jazz Goons and Buffalo Sex Change, Beef Gordon is one of Rochester’s more quirky musical personas; an outsider artist and suspicious loner who moonlights as a lounge singer.
The songwriter crooned about seedy romantic liaisons and a tenuous relationship with the law over canned electronic accompaniment on the 2019 album “Queen Shade & Etc.” He’s also released numerous singles in the interim, including the quirky COVID-era “Shelter Skelter” and last year’s oddly catchy “Unabomber.”
On his new, self-produced album “American Paranoid,” released on Sept. 11, Gordon says that thematically, he “looks back at America in the 21st century.” Musically, he continues to operate in a synth-strewn landscape, but the overall sound is less claustrophobic, in part due to the prominence of of saxophone by Nick Hotto.
The vocals also sound less contrived than on previous songs where Gordon affects a poutier, more melodramatic tone. He’s at his best when he allows the inherent instability of the character to shine more subtly. Singing with his natural tone, he lets the simple catchiness of straightforward hooks drive songs like “Don’t Vote” and “Pop Star,” both of which employ nonchalant spoken-word to brilliant effect.
In this latest collection, Gordon’s place on the post-punk spectrum is clear. His stylistic lineage stems from the idiosyncratic pop of Talking Heads and vocal delivery that straddles the line between apathetic attitude and purposeful melody, à la Joey Ramone. The result is undeniably weird, but endearingly so.
At the end of the day, “American Paranoid” is decidedly a concept album, as track titles like “Crisis Actress” and “Tower 7” would suggest. And while the conceit of song-as-conspiracy theory lands, the individual cuts stand on their own as tightly constructed compositions with B-movie aesthetics.
Daniel J. Kushner is a former CITY arts writer, now contributor. Feedback on this article can be directed to Patrick Hosken at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2024.
