Cleveland’s Mr. Gnome Returns with Highly Personal New Album

Back home in Northeast Ohio after launching a fall U.S. tour that will conclude with a Beachland Ballroom show on Saturday, Nov. 2, Mr. Gnome singer-guitarist Nicole Barille says the shows in support of the local art rock duo’s new album, A Sliver of Space, have been invigorating.

“What were supposed to be our warm-up shows were sold out, and we were shocked,” she says via phone. “We didn’t know that people would care anymore. It’s our first time back on the road in eight years, so we’ve been out of that physical way of communicating with people.”

In the last decade, the group has endured a number of hardships. Since the group’s last album, 2021’s The Day You Flew Away, Barille and her husband, drummer Sam Meister, have been through the ringer.

“Back in 2017, we were supposed to go on tour and my dad passed away unexpectedly, and two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant,” Barille says. “Two insane life moments were happening at the same time. One was devastating, and one was amazing. We wrote The Day You Flew Away about that. We had some songs already written and then wrote more, and it ended up as a double album. They were about before my dad passed and then after. When we were mastering it and getting ready to release when Covid happened.”

Then, Barille’s cousin and best friend passed away. Meister’s brother also died. Those feelings of loss inspired Barille to begin writing the songs for what would become A Sliver of Space.

“I was starting to heal from my dad’s death, and we were isolated and destroyed mentally,” she says. “We were so lost. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, so we threw ourselves into writing this album, which is a collection of what should have been our therapy sessions. This is how I always deal with life. It’s more emotional. Music always saves me, and I don’t know what we would have done if we couldn’t have written songs.”

The band cut the new album at its home studio, where it has recorded ever since 2014’s The Heart of a Dark Star.

“There are pros and cons to it,” Barille says of recording at home. “We loved the studio experience and were so lucky to go to these amazing studios, but that pressure of having a limited time got to us. With every tour, we have invested into gear. We have a blast at our home studio and can push the songs so much further doing them at home because you can really lose yourself in them.”

The opening tune, “Nothing and Everything,” is a shimmering, Siouxsie and the Banshees-like number that allows the band to stretch its musical muscles.

“Sam wrote that tune,” Barille says when asked about the track. “We had the first half of it. It’s about losing your mind and having this person who brings you back down. If you have love in your life, it helps so much. That’s what that song is about. Sam came up with middle and end. We kept it going and made a couple of movements out of it. We’re not afraid to make a super-long tune.”

The album then shifts gears with “Fader,” a swaggering rock tune with a heavy guitar riff that comes off like a heavy Bauhaus tune in the second half.

“We had that riff kicking around for a while,” Barille says. “It was the last song we wrote for the record, and we knew we needed it. We didn’t want to completely depart from what we are at our core. We wrote a ton of heavier songs for this record. At the end of the day, it didn’t feel like it was a full rock album. We had this riff and kept writing different things over it and it finally features the fat bass more and I just started doing these heavy vocals over it. I just found a shoegazer vibe. We always like music where it’s heavy and the vocals are prettier. It was the same with ‘Nothing and Everything.’”

The album settles down again for the ballad “Mind’s Gone,” a tender piano-based track that shows how much the group has evolved from its stoner rock roots.

“I love so many styles of music,” says Barille. “It’s not like I just like indie rock. I love soul and hip-hop. I love a lot of the pop coming out. I don’t know if I have ever said that. I like Billie Eilish and SZA and Kendrick Lamar. I like how pop pushes the boundaries. It does it the most with production. All of those influences have seeped into what we do.”

For live shows, the band starts as a duo but then expands mid-show as bassist-guitarist Jonah joins them for the second half. Barille says returning to playing in front of live audiences has been rewarding; and ending the fall tour at the Beachland will be extra special.

“Releasing songs on the Internet is not fun,” says Barille. “I don’t like it. We’ve always been a grassroots DIY band that gets sweaty and crazy with people.”

Mr. Gnome, Mourning [A] BLKstar, Black Island Condors, 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124. Tickets: $18 ADV, $20 DOS, beachlandballroom.com.

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