Ato Records / Red
2009
A New Tide
About This Album
The punters -- and critics -- should get over it: Gomez will more than likely never again be the loud and proud, wildly distorted experimentalists of their 1998 Mercury prize-winning debut album, Bring It On. All those years and (six) albums have molded this quintet into a band of sharp songwriters who've chosen to write in more conventional rock song forms and polish their sound. Consequently, while the British critics and fans that once lauded them have since written the band off as a "sell out" whatever that means, American audiences and radio have embraced them. While this music isn't immediately challenging on the surface, there's a lot here, far more than reveals itself in a casual listen. From the jump, Gomez was deeply influenced by heavy songwriting acts like the Band, as well as Tom Waits and the best of the post-punk groups. The ability to hone a song lyrically and produce it in such a manner that it extends both the song and the listener is no mean trick. Produced by Brian Deck, A New Tide isn't so much a departure of the band's last ATO album, How We Operate, as it is a deepening of the vein that inspired those songs, and a much more experimental way of creating in the studio.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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