shopaholic_man's Full Review: Bring It On by Gomez
If you are just a casual reader out there, looking for my thoughts on this interesting alternative blues album by Gomez, I shall do that. But first I would like to let you in on an Epinions tradition. On occasion the many of us who write these opinions for the public at large engage in Write Offs of all types. It gets our creative juices flowing, gets more reviews out there for all of you to read, and generally keeps us all excited about writing reviews. In this write off, we recommend music to another epinions writer selected by our host, MattA75. My partner was Lambchops one of our very prolific leads in Music! Lambchops recommended I give Gomez- Bring it On a listen! (and if you want to read a lot, I mean a LOT of great music reviews, scroll through her page and list of review of everything from blues, pop, rock, and alternative.) Well, I bought this album weeks ago, and I've been listening to it on and off since.
To find out a bit about the band, I went to Wikipedia, a sort of collaborative web based encyclopedia. (I don't like to read other peoples reviews of music that I review until after I am done writing). Before hearing Bring it On I had never heard of Gomez.
Background
Gomez is a British band that started playing in 1996, and released their first album Bring it On in 1998. They are Guitarist/Vocalist Ian Ball, Drummer Olly Peacock, guitarist Tom Gray, vocalist/keyboard player/bass player Paul Blackburn and guitarist/vocalist Ben Ottewell. This debut album earned them the 1998 Mercury Music Prize for best ablbum. (an award given annually for the best British or Irish band. The award was established in 92 as an alternative to the Brit Awards.) The band has released 5 more albums since their debut, with the newest How we Operate due out this month, May 2006. This information was all learned from Wikipedia
The Album
It took me a few listens to get into this album. At first listen, I neither liked it nor disliked it, I just listened. After successive listens however, I can tell you, this is one of those albums that grows on you the more that you listen to it.
Get Miles The album begins with raspy vocals of this song, which is a slow burnin' blues number that seems born of the swamps of Mississippi and NOT a city in the Northern part of England. The guitars and drums burn and thump providing the backdrop for the scorching raspy vocals wanting to get miles away. In short, I liked it, I liked it a lot.
Whippin Piccadilly The second track jerks us from the Mississippi swamps back across the Atlantic ocean and back in time to a more British Invasion sound of the sixties and seventies. My ears did a double take, because this song has the infectious pop sound of a band like Herman's Hermits or Donavan without actually sounding like them. It combines this with trippy sounding guitars and rhythms.
Make No Sound reminded me more of an Eric Clapton kind of song, with a bluesy guitar intro, but with the rasping vocal style that I can't put my finger on. This is a quiet reflective ballad style song.
78 Stone Wobble This song features a vibrating guitar sound that defines the song. The vocals have an echo quality about them, and the song has a very textured layered sound to it that combines sixties British pop with late nineties production technology. Late in the song a Spanish announcer is heard in the background, and the song ends with horns.
Tijuana Lady The Spanish sound comes back with Spanish guitars commencing this song. A lone drum beat travels back and forth sounding more like someone knocking on something than a drum. Finally a single acoustic guitar solo begins, and expands into a dreamy atmospheric vocal. Vocal choruses fill in from both sides with a catchy sound Tijuana lady where did you go, I been chasin' you round old Mexico, gonna find my way back to San Diego. It's a quite sounding song, reminicent to me of Mojave 3.
Here It comes the Breeze This is another slow relaxing track, with a bit of bite to it. The song draws you in with layers of guitars and ambient sounds with a moody vocal track on top. Near the end of the song, I heard a number of instruments, including something that sounded like a digeroo (an Australian instrument, that I have most likely mispelled). The band also has some fun with backwards sounds, and instrumentations. It's clear to me that the band was having fun in the studio recording this.
Love is Better than a Warm Trombone This song begins with a catchy guitar riff that is then repeated by the drums and another guitar. Soon the song is rolling along with very infectious vocals. This song is another that seems rooted firmly in the blues, yet infused with a certain sense of style that Gomez can call their own. The more I listened, the more interesting things I heard in the songs.
Get Myself ArrestedI got the same shoes as everyone, I got the same blues as everyone By this point in the album, I was firmly hooked. No longer was I trying to figure out the influence or sound of each song, I was just listening to the band and having fun listening to the songs. This song sounds like Gomez and despite sounds ranging from British pop to Mississippi Delta Blues, they pull off a sound that is uniquely their own. Despite their lyrics, they do NOT have the same blues as everyone, they have some truley original blues, the likes of which I have never heard.
Also on the album are:
Free to Run; Bubble Gum Years; Rie's Wagon and
The Comeback. I cannot point to a weak song on the album, this is not an album with a couple hits and filler, this is a true ALBUM reminicent of the days that Album rock ruled instead of singles downloaded by the masses for consumption on their MP3 players. It plays like an Album, and has a definite, if eccletic, sense of style to it, listened to as a whole. I think this is an album one will enjoy listening to as an album as well, rather than just a collection of songs.
TESTING / PRODUCTION
I'll be honest, it took me weeks to really get into this album. I bought it a couple days after Lambchops suggested it to me, and have been listening to it sporadically since then. I've listened in my car, in my living room on my main setup (Meridian 506 CD player, Yamaha receiver, Rotel amp, Polk Audio Speakers, Velodyne sub), my bedroom (Denon Reciever, Cambridge Soundworks M-60 speakers) and even in the bathroom on a CD boom box. The album is well produced, the album sounds great on a $200.00 boom box as it does on a system costing thousands. The band makes awesome use of stereo, and the songs each have a lot of fun with stereo and a great sense of sonic depth is present in each song. The album is very well produced making it very fun to listen to.
This has been an entry in Matt's I show you mine, you show me yours write off ISYMYSMY W/O
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.