The AOR-ification of Gomez is now complete. Whereas the UK quintet's first three albums were loaded with experimental bits, feints toward dub and electronica, and a general air of eclecticism, their last studio effort and final Virgin album, 2004's Split the Difference, was a marked move into full-on trad-rock. They debuted on ATO last year with the 2xCD live album Out West (one album late according to the Foghat Principle), and their return to the studio produced their squeaky-cleanest album to date in How We Operate. Scraping out most of the experimental guck has focused the band's sound significantly, but the second edge of that sword cuts them into a much more boring group.
The songwriting centers on generally strong melodies, but this most American-sounding of British groups neither benefits from the additional attention called to the lyrics nor offers consistently interesting arrangements to support them. The band's triple-guitar lineup gets craziest on "Cry on Demand" (Opening line: "I wish I could cry on demand boo hoo boo hoo"), turning some otherwise ho-hum verses about an ambiguous Las Vegas mishap into a weirdly see-sawing splatterfest; they also take the two most disjointed, non-rhyming lines and try to make them into a chorus, which doesn't work so well. "Hamoa Beach" gets the chorus home more effectively, backing up the vocal harmonies with fuzzy slide guitar and a bubbling wah riff that makes the song infinitely more memorable.
The band tries to air out its love for American blues on "Charley Patton Songs", which ironically has not a hint of blues in it. The introductory lyric about spending a lifetime trying to decipher Charley Patton songs feels disconnected from the rest of the song, which builds up to a just plain confounding chorus-y thing that goes "I've been looking in New York/ I've been looking in Chicago/ I've been looking in New Orleans/ I can't find you." It's weirdly literal, but I can't tell from the other lyrics who they're looking for-- if it's Patton, they might have tried checking rural Mississippi instead of just naming a bunch of big American cities.
The album's poorest entries in the Gomez songbook grate for other reasons--"See the World" is just the epitome of bland, sounding barely a step removed from that Five For Fighting song that polluted MTV2 a couple of years ago, and "All Too Much" falls into the same territory, just with an added loud/soft dynamic for the chorus. It's tough to gauge what the average Gomez fan will think of this-enough of the band's spirit is still there that I imagine many will make the transition, but anyone who enjoyed Gomez for their more adventurous traits will be left in the cold by How We Operate.
