Ten tracks, the seventh studio album by Gomez has been born quite differently, it was demoed, written, arranged, and recorded over the Web, each of the members uploading ideas on which the others could work. It might be unusual, but while currently the band are spread out across 2 continents, split between the UK and US with Ian Ball residing in Los Angeles, Olly Peacock in Brooklyn, N.Y. and Paul Blackburn, Tom Gray and Ben Ottewell in Brighton, England, this working process comes quite naturally. But this working practices didn’t actually effect in any way the music of the band. Perhaps because Gomez since their very beginning in 1996 never have a leader, but three singers and four songwriters out of five members.
Their first album, “Bring It On” released in 1998 won the Mercury Music Prize in the same year, giving them much media attention in the UK and throughout the world. Later awards came from the NME and Q Magazine along with a Brit Awards nomination. They singed to Hut Records – division of Virgin – in 1997, but Just before their third album release “In Our Gun” Hut Records was forced to downsize and on the following record, “Split the Difference”, the label was disbanded by Virgin/EMI Records. Than they decided to go it alone and asked Virgin Records to let them go in 2004 and the following year sined with American label ATO Records.
It’s something warm, retro-vivid about Gomez what I always enjoyed and nothing’s actually changed with “Whatevers On Your Mind”. They enjoy themselves making music and I enjoy listening it. It might be odd, but it’s more and more rare lately.
Gomez – Official Site
Gomez @ MySpace
Gomez @ Facebook
ATO Records
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