Gomez - A New Tide

Gomez. One of my favorite bands for a long time. I wish, I really do wish I could keep telling people that. Their past few records have only been more and more poppy. Their 3rd studio record (In Our Gun) at first turned me off due to it's experimentalism. Now? I yearn for the grittiness and its earnest sounds. Their debut album won the Mercury Prize for God's sake. Since then, they have continued to put out more and more lackluster records (don't even get me started on B-sides record Five Men in a Hut and live album Out West...what were they thinking? Take the worst live show we've ever played and sell it? I think so).

That's not to say they have been bad. Not at all. But more filler than killer if you know what I mean. 2004's Split the Difference was a return to the great great hooks from Liquid Skin but a great leap in sheen and pop. I knew there was no turning back upon hearing 2006's How We Operate. Both good records, but both had less of the British sound that I had fallen in love with.

Now, A New Tide is a slap in the face. This is a band I would travel to see, stay up all hours of the night during Jazz Fest to witness, skipped school one day in high school to completely absorb their new record. A New Tide, again, isn't a bad record, but the listener can just tell that the songs were written apart, recorded with no collaboration, and arranged with no heart. To clear this up, a little backstory perhaps: after How We Operate, two members left the UK (one to LA, one to Michigan...Michigan) and the newest record was recorded in studios in the three locales, pasting together parts via an FTP server. While they and their record company (and Rolling Stone, but who is that anymore) laud their ability to make a record in that method, what good is it?

Digital recording is an inevitability these days. It's relatively cheap, anyone can get into it, and there's no way to really mess up if you're just learning. Does that mean that a group of studio veterans should waste creative energy by using this digital format to its fullest abilities? No! Maybe I'm wrong and they just had a case of writer's block. Maybe they're getting old or the solo projects were not such a good idea. Either way, I implore the boys of Gomez (Ben, Ian, Olly, Blackie, and Tom) to get together and write and record the proper way. Please.