Mr. Gnome Issue #36

Deliver This Creature (El Marko)

By Annie Holub
Published: August 1st, 2008 | 10:17am

Nicole Barille and Sam Meister are quite possibly the sexiest people alive. Just watch them perform; Barille’s hair sweeps across her face as she attacks her guitar and cries into the microphone while Meister works it so hard that onlookers develop an intense desire to be his drum kit. As Cleveland, Ohio–based Mr. Gnome, Barille and Meister play music that can be heavier than heavy metal but also atmospheric and beautiful. Each song ends breathlessly, with intensity, on that line between pleasure and pain.

On Deliver This Creature, their first official full-length (they’ve released two EPs: a self-titled one in 2006, and Echoes on the Ground in 2007), the duo takes the idea of stretching their limits seriously. Barille’s guitar gets wicked, reforms, and then goes wicked again; Meister’s drumsticks touch every surface of his kit so quickly, the effect is vertiginous. The songs, more like compositions, are melodic and expansive; which is quite impressive from a band whose sound was already so expansive.

Mr. Gnome’s strength is their ability to mediate between the two poles of rock; the coarse and raw, and the pristine and polished. Their music combines elements that for any other band would be disparate and strange, but for Mr. Gnome, make perfect sense. They do this on the record as a whole (an angry “I’m Alright” is followed by the peaceful “Silhouette”) and within songs; the title track builds on a fast-moving riff that sounds punk or angelic depending on the accenting, and “After the Sun” is in one moment heavy on the cymbals and distortion, and in the next Barille’s voice becomes absolutely ethereal. Indeed, the walls that the notes echo off of on Deliver are important: they seem to be Mr. Gnome's only real limit.