It's hard not to damn Gomez with faint praise. You want to love them, because they seem like such nice, thoughtful British blokes; their songs are tasteful, well-executed guitar-pop, cleverly arranged with bluesy flourishes and supple vocal harmonies; and they're obviously in it for the love, as evidenced by their soldiering on after Virgin "parted ways" with them a couple albums ago. They're all clearly good musicians, and the different vocal styles of singers Ben Ottewell, Ian Ball and Tom Gray (between the
three of them they do a breathy Nick Drake with a bit of Damon Gough, and those are not bad things) give the group fresh tractionon almost every song.
Blah blah. Does "How We Operate" rock? Well, erm, uh... hey, they sure seem like nice guys.
Gomez do connect with a few pitches this time out. The big-hearted "See The World" is bouncy, jangly fun, "Girlshapedlovedrug" sounds like one of Ringo's Beatles tunes, and "Woman! Man!" swells around a sinewy guitar line into a tasty "Sha-la-la-la" chorus. And hopefully the band will use the testy "Charly Patton Songs" as the jumping-off point for their next record. With its Wilco-y noise and math-y refrain, not to mention its tender vocal and graceful lyrics, "Charly Patton" reveals a lot more of Gomez's soul and talent than they manage to show elsewhere on the record.
Too often on "How We Operate" the band seems to get in their own way. The drowsy "Notice" opens the generally up-beat album with a whimper. "Cry On Demand" features an enigmatically beautiful wind-up into a perfect chorus with layered harmonies; bright, twangy guitars; and great funny/sad lyrics
("Sometimes I wish I could cry on demand / Boo-hoo, boo-hoo /Given all these troubles on my mind / The tears won't come out"), but the lame verses and even lamer mid-song breakdown do such a poor job setting it up that the killer chorus almost seems like the work of a different band. Gomez at least know enough to ride out the good part, so the song is partly saved by a strong ending.
And then there's "Chasing Ghosts With Alcohol," which starts as an achingly sung acoustic number but screeches into a noisy middle section in which the band lumbers along pointlessly and then, as if realizing their mistake too late, fade out to make room for the acoustics that were doing just fine without them.
The rest of the album is, for want of a better term, meh. A couple terse rockers ("How We Operate," "Tear Your Love Apart") that are a bit too clever for their own good; one terse rocker ("All Too Much") that tries to get huge and doesn't so much; and "Don't Make Me Laugh," a languid shuffle with strings and slide-guitar that's, well, really good actually.
So that's five good songs out of twelve, plus two that are frustratingly half-good. I'd go so far as to call "See The World" and "Don't Make Me Laugh" *great* songs, which almost-but-not-quite lifts "How We Operate" above the three-star mark. That's a line that Gomez has had a hard time getting over so far, but I'm rooting for them. They're too nice not to. |