Celebrating ten years of original sound this October, Gomez returns with their eagerly awaited new album, How We Operate. After four self-produced albums and some coaxing from their relatively new label, (ATO Records) Gomez hired an outside producer to fine-tune their latest. Gil Norton, who has worked with one of Gomez’s personal favorites, The Pixies and other seasoned musicians (Counting Crows and Foo Fighters), added his expertise while preserving their unique “genre-less” style.The roots of Gomez trace back to four friends from Southport, England: Guitarist/vocalist Ian Ball and drummer Olly Peacock played together in a local heavy-metal band influenced by the likes of both grunge (Nirvana and Pearl Jam) and 60’s psychedelia (Jimi Hendrix and Woody Guthrie). By their late teens they met up with Paul Blackburn (bass, guitar, vocals) and Tom Gray (vocals, guitars, keyboards) to begin blazing their own trail in the indie-music world. The final piece to the puzzle was found when Ian met Ben Ottewell. His slide guitar skills and brusque, velvety voice was the perfect fit for these English bluesmen.
They slipped as comfortably into their name as they did their music: Back in 1996, they played their first gig without a formal name. They left a sign out for a friend named Gomez to indicate where they were playing and the rest is history. And quite an impressive history with seven albums in less than ten years. Their debut album in 1998, Bring It On received critical acclaim from both sides of the Atlantic and won the Mercury Music Prize for best album that year.
The band’s following albums, Liquid Skin (1999), In Our Gun (2002) and Split the Difference (2004) all reached the top 40 on the UK and Australian charts. In an effort to build their popularity in the US, Gomez toured the states extensively in the past few years. They played at the Coachella Festival in 2003, various venues in 2004, and joined Cake last year as part of the Virgin Records Megatour. In June 2005, they released a double disc live album, Out West from compilations of shows recorded at San Francisco’s Fillmore Theater.
Article comments
1 - anita glick
hey jo~ Got it! It is really excellent. This is not easy to do. Great detail. I'm assuming that you do some research and then weave it together? Thanks for sharing and keep on keeping on:))
Love, ABG
2 - joanne
Thank you, ABG! I appreciate the read! Rusty missed out on us...
3 - Connie Phillips
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