Blues boys play a blinder

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Oct 24, 1999 | by Leon McDermott

MUSIC Gomez Glasgow Barrowland The Beta Band might be the ones getting all the critical acclaim in the wilfully-abstract-indie-band- with-more-ideas-than-sense category, but Gomez are the ones with the ability to translate their skewed vision into proper songs and record sales.

Since day one they've been derided as bandwagon-jumpers and accused of cynically appropriating blues, folk and hip hop with no real heart - of coldly calculating the right mix of reference points but still ending up sounding like five trad-rock musos. On record, it's sometimes easy to see why - they can sound contrived and forced, as if they're suffering under the weight of how good they think their ideas are. But live, any such fears are blown away.

Ben Ottewell's 60-Camel-a-day voice rasps like an old bluesman's, peppering the more melodious harmonies of Tom Gray and Ian Ball with the gruff fervour of a latter-day Tom Waits during a riotous Get Myself Arrested. Folky melodies lapse into low-slung breakbeats and My Bloody Valentine basslines - and they launch into baroque rock opera and a quick cover of sampling classic Pump Up The Volume as if these were the most obvious things in the world to do.

Bring It On would be the Pixies' lost collaboration with Captain Beefheart if it didn't veer off into abstract hip hop halfway through, while 78 Stone Wobble's frantic blues funk slides effortlessly into an impromptu blast of the Stones' Not Fade Away.

But no matter how abstract the diversions are, everything is glued together by a relentlessly adventurous aesthetic. Songs turn on musical sixpences, alternating between all-out white noise and beautiful melody when you least expect it. There's more experimentation here than in a chemistry lab, but Gomez know what they're doing. If this is a laboratory, it's hosting the best party in town.

Leon McDermott