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at a glance...
Hometown:
Southport, England
First Recordings: 1996
Personnel:
Tom Gray -vocals, guitar, keyboards
Ben Ottewell -vocals, guitar
Ian Ball -vocals, guitar, harmonica
Paul Blackburn -bass, vocals
Olly Peacock -drums, percussion
Dajon -mental percussion
Notes:
Gomez got their act together in a garage outside Liverpool, recording much of their debut album Bring It On before they even played a gig together. Once Hut released the record, however, interest in the group snowballed. Met with stellar reviews in the British music press, Bring It On sucker-punched the competition to snag the Mercury Music Prize, Britain's cred-boosting album of the year award. After doing lots of interviews where they slagged other bands for being boring, they recorded their follow-up album Liquid Skin in six different studios, including Abbey Road. Unfortunately, it was a little boring. Ignoring their critics, as ever, and shaking whatever illness had threatened to turn them into the Dave Matthews Band, Gomez returned in 2002 with In Our Gun, an album that positively blew away everything by their contemporaries and even most of their own excellent back catalog. Unfortunately, the same critics that lauded Bring It On didn't even bother to listen to In Our Gun, and one can only hope they hold doggedly to their beliefs that critics are full of shit and making music is the only thing worth doing.
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Gomez
In Our Gun
Hut/Virgin, Released 2002
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Has any band ever made it look so easy? Three great voices, five songwriters, all instrument-swapping groove merchants with elegant tastes, Gomez have been almost cavalier with their gifts. In Our Gun is a work of almost savant-like easy genius, and the fact that no one seems to recognize it as such probably proves that all of us - critics, fans, Gomez themselves - have been taking this band for granted. Don't do it. Buy this album and hold it dear, because you won't hear a better one any time soon.
Blame for our collective underestimation falls in part on Gomez's last album. Liquid Skin was a meandering, occasionally lazy affair that hid magical moments between too many soft-focus snoozers. In Our Gun, by contrast, is the most focused Gomez have ever sounded. It's full of their debut album's joyful free spirit but infused with more wisdom and insight than a bunch of 25-year-olds has any right to.
Every tune is as catchy as, say, "Whippin' Piccadilly," but each seems to run deeper, touch darker places, and return with more complete answers than before. From the sinister, frantic honking of opener "Shot Shot" through the hymnal, healing "Sound of Sounds" and beyond, everything here has an air of substance. The words tell tales of burnt fingers, lessons learned and proud persistence, and the music is resonant without ever getting self-consciously heavy. "Detroit Swing 66" is probably the best example: a nervous, darkly comic lyric about trying to keep one's shit together bubbles along atop a stuttering, strikingly original electro-rock swing. The effect? Pure joy. It's a trick they pull off a dozen more times. How do they do it? Who knows. Gomez probably have no idea how they do it. But somehow they've gotten even better at it, and In Our Gun damn near perfects it. The sound of easy genius. Don't miss it.
If you like Gomez, check out:
Gomez Bring It On
The Charlatans Tellin' Stories
Paul Weller Wild Wood
Cornershop When I Was Born for the Seventh Time
Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique
-- Jesse Fahnestock
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