Gomez: Whatever’s On Your Mind
For the better part of fifteen years, Southport England’s Gomez has bubbled just under the mainstream radar, delivering their highly original brand of jammy, bluesy, indie rock & roll with great aplomb, far surpassing most of their peers in scope (if not sales) yet never sounding like anyone but themselves. Featuring three lead singers and four collaborative songwriters, this is clearly a band whose whole far surpasses the sum of their already-impressive parts. Lead vocals are often shared but are generally split pretty evenly between the gruff, throaty-voiced Ben Ottewell, the gritty rock&roll voice of Tom Gray, and the higher-pitched voice of Ian Ball (who sounds remarkably similar to The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess).
Whatever’s On Your Mind, the band’s seventh studio album, continues that collective formula but ups the ante with songs that find the band reaching wicked new levels of maturity. At times it may seem as of the band has gone a bit light, with some songs even venturing slightly into soft-rock territory, but there is nothing wrong with that. A good song is a good song, period. And there are more than plenty good songs on this set.
Ian Ball kicks things off with the instantly catchy “Options”, which finds the singer at a crossroads – he could settle down, grow up, get a good job, raise a family…or he could pack it all in and move back into his parent’s house…”at least I’ve got options”. Well said…and, by the way, go to the band’s website and check out the video for this song….it will keep you humming it for days. Elsewhere, Ball offers up the excellent “Just As Lost As You”, while Ben Ottewell, whose voice usually tends to grace some of the band’s heavier numbers, delivers “Our Goodbye”, a slow, sentimental, string-laden ballad which is perhaps the most beautiful song to ever come from this band. The arrangements on this album show the band still restless and clever as ever, especially on “I Will Take You There” and the brilliant “The Place And The People”.
While the songs on this album reveal a more focused approach to writing – as opposed to, say, early classics such as “Here Comes The Breeze”, where everything including the kitchen sink was featured – you can still sense the influence of all the members of the band in the construction of these songs, rather than the usual approach of “whoever-wrote-it-sings-it” that most bands adopt. Then again, Gomez aren’t like most bands.
Most interesting is the method the band employed to create this album. With members currently living all over the world, this album was completely written via the internet, with the writers tinkering with each others’ demos and passing them back and forth, over a period of a couple of years, creating a pressure-free writing environment. What this also did, of course, was end up yielding some 80 songs, which was then trimmed down to the lean 10-track masterpiece we have here. Then, meeting up in Virginia with producer Sam Farrar, they brought these songs to life and brought the best out of each other. It was also a relative given that Gomez were already one of those bands who are in it for the long-haul…this method only makes that more of a possibility and will likely be a model for other bands to be able to continue in the future.
Recent years have seen solo albums by both Ian Ball and Ben Ottewell and, while both are quite good on their own merits, neither of them really holds a candle to the band’s collaborative work (much like the majority of the Beatles’ solo albums). Unfortunately, this album seems to have gotten a lot of negative press from those who may carry a torch for the band’s earlier work but I suggest you ignore all of those reviews and hear me out. This is, without a doubt, one of THE albums of 2011. Look for this on my end of year best-of. It will be there, for sure.
The big question, of course, is where are those other 70 songs?!?!? Anyway…
I’ve been threatening to include local artists in this column and have been asking for your CDs (see sidebar). I have gotten a few so far, and I will do my best to feature them all at some point. In the meantime, I am happy to kick this off with…
Amber Dutton: Fireflies And Cigarette Lights
Amber Dutton is a local singer/songwriter who is poised for great things. Performing primarily in the VA/DC/MD area, she has spent the last few years honing her craft at venues and coffeehouses such as IOTA, The Red & The Black, Common Grounds, the Del Ray Music Festival (where I first became aware of her talent) and even a recent appearance at the 9:30 Club. Her first album, Fireflies And Cigarette Lights, was just self-released and is a fun, quirky record full of intricate wordplay, confessional songs, and sparse arrangements that reflect the late-night, back-porch vibe of the album’s title. Songs like the clever “Pity Patter”, “In The Breeze” (featuring, among other things, beat-boxing!), and “Friendly Fire” remind me of an early (and much less angry) Ani Difranco, while elsewhere you can hear the influence of the likes of Dar Williams, Kris Delmhorst, and perhaps even Josh Ritter. While the instrumentation on most of these tracks are wide and varied, this is one of the more uncluttered albums I’ve heard, and only “Gettable” and the haunting “Spies And Truth” venture into rockin’ territory, with Amber’s voice sounding like a more restrained Victoria Williams. “Feelin’ Free” has a real jazzy feel while the album-closing “Montana” is a slow burner not unlike some of the work Jason Molina did under the Songs:Ohia banner. Beautifully packaged, this is one of the more refreshing and accomplished self-released CDs I’ve come across. More information can be found on her website, www.amberdutton.com. I suggest y’all take a peek and catch her live as soon as you can.
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