June 26, 1999

Gomez : Bring it on

In here there's no pain, no humour, no wisdom, and no joy in anything apart from wanking endlessly on at your electric guitar.

A spirited gumbo is cooked up by the blues-fixated lads on this,
the
first single from their eagerly-awaited new LP. Beginning with a snaking guitar riff, Ben Ottewell's mournful growl sheds a strange glow in this murky and psychedelic Delta stomp. Anyone that says that these lads aren't doing something new and exciting with music must need their head testing! To these ears this is pretty forward-looking and exciting stuff!

I'm sorry. The 'Joy And Truth In Music' chip in this
computer
must have been on the blink for a few minutes there. But, truth-wise, 'Bring It On' is the ideal soundtrack to sitting inside a communal house and smoking dope before putting on some
sort
of generic 'herby stew'.

Which isn't exactly surprising given the probable circumstances of its gestation.

The depressing part about all this, though, is that people listen
to
it and don't realise that it seems to have been made by people who've spent the majority of their 20-odd years asleep. In here there's no pain, no humour, no wisdom, and no joy in anything apart from wanking endlessly on at your electric guitar. People say it sounds like Beck or The Beta Band, but really, it doesn't. It doesn't sound like that at all.

Oh, by the way. Anyone wondering why this is called 'Bring It On' can rest easy. It's what Gomez say in restaurants when the waiter brings round the second helping of Satan's scaly pecker.

JOHN ROBINSON