Gomez starts fresh with new producer, eccentric sounds
Album cover courtesy of ATO Records
Gomez rides the recent wave of indie rock bands trying to make it big in the mainstream with their newest album, How We Operate.
When Gomez dropped their debut album in 1998, critics instantly fell in love with them, and Bring It On received Britain's prestigious Mercury Music Prize, beating out heavyweights like Massive Attack and the Verve. Since then Gomez's efforts have been met with mixed reviews and they have so far been unsuccessful in breaking into the US charts.
This time around they're looking to change that, with a new label, a great producer and an eclectic mix of folk-infused, psychedelic Brit-pop. After being dropped by long-time label Virgin, Gomez signed with ATO Records in 2005.
With a fresh perspective facilitated by the new label, the band enlisted the aid of producer Gil Norton to oversee their fifth studio album, How We Operate.
Within the span of three songs, the album jumps from a power folk tune ("Hamoa Beach") complete with washboard and banjo, through a Top 40's pop song and first single ("Girlshapedlovedrug"), and finally to a rock song whose slide guitar-dominated intro masquerades as Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Ballad of Curtis Lowe" ("Chasing Ghosts with Alcohol").
Diversity is one of Gomez's greatest strengths and biggest weaknesses. With three singers who also serve songwriting duties, every song sounds unique. No song will have the same style as the one preceding it. Having three singers also affords Gomez great flexibility with harmonies, which are expertly displayed in one of the album's stand out tracks, "Charley Patton Songs".
However, this eclectic mix does create some discontinuity between the songs. How We Operate sounds more like a greatest hits disc than a studio album. While this does say a great deal about the quality of the songs, especially the first eight, the record lacks album cohesion that some people may value. Still, it's preferable to a repetitive album.
Musically, Gomez is great because they possess an incredible talent of mixing obscure genres of music into something altogether more palatable. The record manages to sound polished when it needs to but maintain an edge when you want it. There truly is "something for everyone" here. The question is, will anyone pay attention long enough to find it?
