The past twelve months have been bookends of a kind for Gomez. The band came to House of Blues behind their sixth studio album, A New Tide, but a few months ago they played a series of shows performing their debut album Bring It On in its entirety in honor of the album’s tenth anniversary. A deluxe anniversary edition of the album, which won the 1998 Mercury Music Prize, was also released.
This time out, they focused on the new rather than the old, playing only a couple of songs from Bring It On (including the redoubtable “Whippin’ Piccadilly”) and mixing in songs from every album except the craftily chaotic Liquid Skin, including surprises like “Catch Me Up.” The newest songs held up well, though the HOB’s muddy sound mix (up front at least) deprived the songs of some crucial definition, particularly in the sharp soft/loud transitions that A New Tide depends on.
Nevertheless, Gomez is successfully renewing its stock in trade: “Airstream Driver,” the cheerfully non-sequitur strewn current single, got the relatively quiet crowd dancing. “Bone Tired,” performed apparently for the first time, featured two of the band playing their iPhones, a touch that tied together the shambolic early days with the more measured and mature recent albums. (Members of the band recently posted an all-iPhone album written during one trip on their tour bus at The Final Keep Me Up.
Another new song, “Other Plans,” purports to be about a summer romance, but could just as easily be about the tribulations of keeping a band together through success, struggles, and side projects: “It’s no secret / I know you’ve got other plans / That don’t involve me / But I’m not giving up / I know we’ve still got a chance / When / We start over / Next year.”
Over their career, Gomez’s greatest strength has always been the dynamic between their three singer/guitarists: the skinny rock-star-in-hiding Ian Ball, the goofy, barefooted Tom Gray, and the towering Ben Ottewell. Each stamped their personality on the HOB show. Ball’s “Win Park Slope” sounds like it might be a poppy outtake from Thom Yorke’s The Eraser. Gray’s “Girlshapedlovedrug” plays up his messy moptop and NHS glasses, which he pushes back up his nose each time the hook rolls around. But the band’s staging reflects its greatest strength, placing Big Ben front and center. Ottewell’s slide guitar work and riveting voice are Gomez's most distinctive features, the big draws that make space for the band to explore the all the odd corners of their talent.
So for their encore, advertised as “nasty Germanic rock,” Gomez played “Don’t Know Where We’re Going,” a propulsively ugly one-chord jag, and then turned the ship over to Ottewell for “How We Operate.” The band gives Ottewell plenty of room, starting with a simple two-note figure, then pulling out entirely for half a verse. The song builds steadily through verse and chorus, but the live version adds a crescendo-ing coda as Ottewell sings “I’ll try, I’m trying…” higher and higher until he and the the band roar along in unison.
