Music Review: The Gated Community, ‘Goodbye Work’
The band, a staple of the Minneapolis music scene for 20 years, celebrates their staying power and seemingly effortless forward motion with their new album.
The Gated Community’s Goodbye Work album artwork.
There is a familiarity that unwinds from The Gated Community’s Goodbye Work, released June 6, 2025, like the comfort that comes from knowing a friend for a very long time. It comes through the speakers as an invitation of friendship to the listener, giving everyone access to the palpable connection, the intricate earned intimacy, of musicians who have extensive experience playing and collaborating together.
The album artwork—predominantly expansive skies—is a satisfying example of visual prosody; images exactly matching the tone of an album. These songs are wide-ranging and far-reaching. Goodbye Work seeks to bring in the corners of the horizons for closer examination, all with deep human caring and encouragement. It’s like time spent with a companion who knows the power and value of listening with intention. Can a song be a friend? Many of these songs feel that familiar after the very first listen.
The title track “Goodbye Work” takes off at a rollicking lope. The opening guitar leans heavily bluegrass, all speed and precision. It evokes wheels on pavement and a release from obligation as the narrator dreams of leaving it all behind and wandering the world. This traveling song appeals to a well-worn fantasy to dodge our job—a type of escape from ourselves—expressing the tension of wanting to pack it all up and leave against the need to make a living. The cluck of the banjo along with the roll of brushes on snare add to the feeling of lighting out for the territories.
One of the album’s most striking elements is that each track contains just the right tone and touch of guitar. Nowhere is this more evident than in the song “No More Water.” The Greg Brown-esque acoustic guitar work leads us in and out of the melodic turns skillfully, exposing new ground.
Another example is the beautiful hooky electric guitar riff on “What I Hate.” It gives the listener the feeling of ground being covered at a walking pace. The guitar work skillfully takes the listener back to the lyrics of the song.
The album’s light and lithe production is another of its highlights. A deep well of unique sounds support and help tell its stories. Each track is finely crafted, sanded and smoothed, intelligent and refined. The touch of harmonica on “Cornelia” adds just the right amount of rasp and contrast. The guitar tone on “Bunker” has just enough edge to be the sonic foil to the smooth harmonies and soft back and forth of the underlying chord progression.
The Gated Community. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
“Weed Smoke and Worry” has a timeless quality that makes this track fit as well in modern times as it would 150 years ago. The fanciful trill of the piano leads the listener to a Gold Rush-era watering hole with the boarding rooms just up the stairs. The lines “There’s choppers enforcing a curfew / I’ll get off the highway by ten” speak of a dystopian dread that plays on our natural inclination to ruminate about what the future may or may not hold.
The chorus sets up residence in the listeners’ ears and makes you want to sing along with the beautifully expansive three-part harmony. No matter how far any given track leans towards indie folk or to alt-country, The Gated Community has a knack for unifying choruses that become singable after the first hearing, and it’s easy to envision fans singing these melodies and words back to the band at live shows.
Goodbye Work is simultaneously a fantasy of abandoning struggle and a proper way to release an album into the world—saying farewell to the work that has been completed as it goes out to delight, comfort, and mend. Maybe it also tells a story of letting go of the toilsome side of creating something, relying solely on the magic.
Magic abounds on this album. There’s familiarity and warmth to every track on this record. It’s like that person you know who’s genuinely never met a stranger. The Gated Community’s Goodbye Work is a fast friend with whom you savor every moment spent. It’s clear and accepting while challenging the modern realities of our current situation. It’s an arms-wide-open offering to everyone who listens.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doyle Turner. Photo credit: no_aesthetic_stills.
Doyle Turner loves words. Whether it is shaping syllables into songs, poems, early morning journals, handwritten thank yous, lists, or album reviews, he is in a deep and abiding relationship with his college-ruled paper, Uniball Signo 207 .7mm pens, and mostly his keyboard. A good day is spent taking pictures, mailing things, making the words convey the precise meaning, driving, and singing.
