It’s a good time to be Gomez (www.gomeztheband.com). The British quintet is all over America’s telly, rocking Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, even landing a song on the hit show “Grey’s Anatomy.” In Charlottesville, they will appear in the flesh on Tuesday, January 23, at Starr Hill Music Hall.
 The British band, Gomez, is growing by leaps and bounds, thanks in part to Dave Matthews and Coran Capshaw’s baby, ATO Records. |
After a 10-year career and five studio albums, Gomez owe their sudden burst of airtime—and their first appearance in Charlottesville—to ATO Records, the label founded by Dave Matthews and Coran Capshaw, which signed Gomez last year.
“This is the most attention we’ve received in the United States, by a long shot,” says singer and guitarist Tom Gray.
The spotlight is trained on Gomez’s new album, How We Operate, released this past summer. Their first effort for ATO marks another evolution for a band that has defined itself by refusing to be defined.
Gomez broke out in 1998 with Bring It On, embedding melodic hooks within sprawling, experimental compositions. Bring It On earned Gomez a wreath of “next big thing” laurels, and they went to work on Hut Recordings, a subsidiary label that British media behemoth Virgin designed to tap the booming market for quirky, independent music. Gomez continued writing catchy rock spiced with studio wizardry on subsequent albums Liquid Skin (1999), In Our Gun (2002) and Split The Difference (2004).
“Gomez really came into being for the purpose of genre-busting,” says Gray. “We didn’t want to sit in one place and be ordinary. We tried to do something different every single time.”
Such an approach defies an industry that relies on labels like “alternative” or “low-fi indie-alt-polka-core” to peddle bands in ever-narrowing consumer niches. Though Gomez’s musical pastiche lured listeners of various stripes, they never became the big thing Virgin hoped for.
Hut Recordings shut down as Virgin “downsized” several years ago, and Gomez asked Virgin to release them. Soon afterward, Chris Tetzeli of Red Light Management tracked down Gomez at a New York performance and signed them to ATO in 2005.
“Getting out of [Virgin] was a huge relief,” says Gray. “These guys [at ATO] are lovely. We know who owns the company. It’s actually founded on the basis of building careers in music, rather than milking something quickly in the marketplace.”
For How We Operate, ATO hooked Gomez up with veteran producer Gil Norton, who previously worked with the Pixies and Foo Fighters. Gray says Norton helped the band build songs efficiently, instead of “just throwing stuff around” in the studio.
The band’s experimental style is still evident on How We Operate, but the effects are subtle, not sprawling. Sly oddities (like sudden bursts of silence on “Notice,” or a robotic banjo riff that kicks off the title track) come tucked into tightly constructed pop songs like blueberries in your pancakes. Songs like “See the World” are sweet but not saccharine, made for iPods.
In fact, Gomez has thrived in the digital age, where one catchy tune can spread like a virus. Single-song downloads, along with songs sold for movies and TV, now makes up one quarter to one third of the band’s income, says Gray.
Rock bands still need to hit the road, though, and Gomez is now on an extensive American tour (in a bus burning bio-diesel fuel) opening for O.A.R. and headlining with Ben Kweller. In Charlottesville, they will show why their eclectic spirit has earned them a reputation for dramatic live performances. “Expect dynamics,” says Gray. “We like to do very quiet and very loud. Hopefully when people walk away, they feel entertained because they haven’t had a chance to get bored.”