Since its release last May, Gomez's album "How We Operate" has consistently garnered critical and commercial acclaim with Entertainment Weekly, Billboard and NPR calling the album the band's finest. "How We Operate" was hailed as "The Best Rock Album of the Year" by The Wall Street Journal.
The title track off of "How We Operate" quickly became a staple track for the hit ABC series "Grey's Anatomy," where it was prominently featured in the season finale and show promos. In addition, the band celebrated their first #1 single on the AAA airplay charts with their current single "See the World," which remained in the top slot for 5 weeks.
This year alone, Gomez has been featured twice on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno performing both the title track as well as "See The World" and have also performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Last Call with Carson Daly.
Solidifying their reputation for transcendent live performances, Gomez has sold out each leg of their 2006 and 2007 headlining tours, which included dates with the Dave Matthews Band as well as an opening slot at Madison Square Garden. Gomez are gearing up for a summer tour including a run of dates with The Fray starting in July.
Gomez, who have been touring and making records for over a decade, seems to have just arrived. "As a creative partnership, and as friends, we had to regroup and make a career-defining record," says Tom Gray (vocals, guitar, keyboards). Longtime cohort Ben Ottewell (vocals, guitar) concurs. "The last album (Split the Difference) was pretty rocking, and reflected the live show a lot. With this one, we wanted to focus on songs, melodies and words, rather than volume."
The band also features Ian Ball (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Paul Blackburn (bass, guitar), and Olly Peacock (drums). The quintet may have been playing together for a decade but their friendships date back even further. Ian and Olly have been friends since they were still in short pants, while the rest of the lads entered the picture as the duo progressed through academia. Drawing on their disparate tastes, which ranged from Nirvana to Woody Guthrie, Motown singles to barbershop quartets, Gomez honed a one-of-a-kind sound that incorporated all their influences around a shared point of reference: A deep, abiding love for creative music.
After releasing their debut single, "78 Stone Wobble" in spring of 1998, Gomez soon attracted international attention when they won the Mercury Music Prize for their debut full-length, Bring It On, which SPIN anointed "a damn beautiful album." It was followed by Liquid Skin (1999), and the rarities-and-B-sides compilation Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline (2000), and In Our Gun (2002).
2004 brought album number five, Split The Difference, hailed by the BBC as "one of the finest releases of the year." But soon after, Gomez literally split-- from their longtime label, Virgin Records. In 2005 Gomez inked a new deal with Dave Matthews' ATO Records, who issued the band's first live album, Out West.
The label switch has greatly benefited the band. "It's been a breath of fresh air, after the deeply ridiculous world of today's corporate record industry, where the tax year dictates creative output," says Gray.
To better focus their creative energies for their first studio release for ATO, Gomez enlisted their first outside producer, Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters). From their first meeting, the band felt confident they had made the right choice.
"The main thing with this record was to get everybody together in one room, working on all the songs together, and making sure there was a real unified vision," Gray confirms.
"On our old records, certain elements were carefully thought out, but a lot of things were simply done in the spur of the moment," explains Ottewell. "On this one, we didn't lose that spontaneity, but we thought things through a bit more. Ever since our second record, we've been involved in a long process of trying to tease out the best bits of what we do, and not clutter things up. Gil helped show us the way."
"The principle was to keep the whole recording very simple," says Ball of the manner in which the album's twelve tracks were written, rehearsed, and laid down. "If everyone didn't agree on a potential song, it was promptly withdrawn from consideration. Time and money were limited, which was good, because in the past we have occasionally tended to, shall we say, go to town."
At the same time, Norton recognized that he was overseeing a band with multiple songwriters that in essence, had grown up together. "Everyone had to be represented on this record," concurs Gray. "We needed to get the balance right again. Gil isn't at all conservative. He just loves a good song, done well, and he doesn't think that adding too much coloration actually helps bring a song to life."
"There's always been a certain ragged glory to Gomez," Grey concluded.
How We Operate retains and revitalizes that glory and presents it in a more immediately gripping form. "This is certainly the most cohesive record we've made," observes Ball. "And yet it remains stylistically genre-less-- which is to say, it's still brilliantly, unabashedly, Gomez."
