mr. Gnome "Heave Yer Skeleton"

3.5/5

If it weren't for the willful overweening weirdness that's apparenly required of every proggy pop-metal album (see Coheed and Cambria, System of a Down), this record probably would have been made already. But it's approach was just too powerfully obvious. Why not give heavy, down-tuned, open string riffs the unadorned beauty and poise to match the glistneing production? This duo's debut full-length balances a soulful, feminine power that recalls Scout Niblett and a drummer who coldly demands dymanic shifts with almost electronic precision. It's an earnest tug-of-war.

Jason Simms - Spin Magazine

BREAKING
The Rolling Stone New Music Blog

Hype Monitor: Mr. Gnome

The Band: Mr. Gnome

The Buzz: OK, full confession: we didn't even know there was a band called Mr. Gnome until we looked at the BFR charts. And we keep up on this stuff. So, buzz? They're a duo from Cleveland named Mr. Gnome. Any questions?

Listen If: Good god, man, they're called Mr. Gnome! How many more reasons do you need?

Key Track: The excellent "Night of the Crickets," where great swipes of serrated guitar slash across Nicole Barille's gooey vocals. The absolute antidote to all those shrinking violets we've been big upping lately.

http://www.rollingstone.com/blogs/breaking/2008/05/hype-monitor-radio-dept-mr-gno.php - Rolling Stone.com

Pitchfork: Forkcast - mr. Gnome:

New Music: mr. Gnome: "Rabbit" [MP3/Stream]

By the sound of "Rabbit", the two people behind Cleveland's mr. Gnome are no laughing gnomes. This song from mr. Gnome's debut full-length, Deliver This Creature, pulls a heckuva lot of noise out of a small hat, pretty much just Sam Meister's tribal drums and the reverberating vocals and sludgily atmospheric guitar fills of Nicole Barille. "Rabbit", run: Barille raises her voice from a breathy whisper to a double-tracked, sustained holler, and her guitar playing ranges from high-pitched, psyched-out tremolo to bone-crunching distorted thrums. "Rabbit sleeping in my brain, wishing things would stay the same," Barille sings. mr. Gnome (yes, that's their lower-case) have been much blogged about on the strength of their catchier, keyboard-accented "Pirates", but their rabbit habit suggests a more patient side-- "Don't you rush in like that," Barille and Meister begin, in harmony. Trix are still for kids.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/forkcast/50475-mr-gnome-rabbit-mp3stream
By Marc Hogan - Pitchfork

Deliver This Creature (available from el marko records) is the latest magnificently twisted musical fruit sprung from the loins of Cleveland-based clamorbrats, mr. Gnome. Coming from the city that has nurtured such notables as Alan Freed, Chrissie Hynde, the burning Cuyahoga River and most importantly, Pere Ubu, it's only natural that Nicole Barille and Sam Meister have adopted a more is messier approach to making music. Amid the cacophony, one is liable to hear artifacts of PJ Harvey, Bjork, Blonde Redhead and gloriously misspent youth. Deliver This Creature sounds like mischievous elves on a Pixie Stix and Wild Irish Rose bender in Tool's practice space. Give them extra points for mixing the record at Madison's Smart Studios, a building that has churned out more than its fair share of beautiful noise. A perfunctory glance at the cover art of Deliver This Creature was enough to send one of my more delicate co-workers into an anxiety-spiral. If life was fair (yeah, Dad, I know it isn't) mr. Gnome would be scoring S. Darko. - My Old Kentucky Blog

4 stars out of 5

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.

- Annie Holub - Venus Zine

LA WEEKLY Rock Picks:
Mr. Gnome at the Knitting Factory

Breathy femme vocals waft airily through ethereal soundscapes. Surges of jagged hard-rock guitars come out of nowhere, shake things up and disappear again. Boxy rhythms trip and hop, connecting disparate pieces of sound. Disembodied vocals float above churning snare rattles. Something weird and wonderful is going on in Cleveland, where the indefinable duo Mr. Gnome started in 2005. “Kill the king, save the queen,” Nicole Barille howls against the frantic scraping of her guitar while her partner Sam Meister punches out his drum kit on their new CD, Deliver This Creature (El Marko). Barille’s vocals range from wraithlike keening to softer, more fragile melodies, much like the way Mr. Gnome’s songs shift inventively from placid idylls into febrile storminess, often within the same verse. You can hear traces of PJ Harvey and Portishead in their music, but they reassemble their inspirations into fascinating new collages. Barille and Meister are certainly a charismatic pair. An intriguing undercurrent of sadomasochistic yearning runs throughout the album, from the chaotic title song (“Tie my hands/where are you taking me?”) to the gently climactic sensuality of the closing track, “Tied.

” (Falling James) - LA Weekly