CLASSIC-ROCK MATTERS: Gomez at Avalon
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For the first half-hour of their set last night at Avalon, Gomez failed to bring a song in under the five-minute mark. Which wasn’t such a bad thing. When you’re a grunge-folk sextet from Southport, England, you get points just for pulling off your own songs. See “Girlshapedlovedrug,” a song title that harks back to the paisley psych-metal heyday of Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone, even while the song itself settles in behind a grinding, pumping bass line and an Allmans-esque twang.
Gomez sound like exiles from the last moment in alt-rock history when classic-rock musicianship still mattered, sort of. In their heavy alt-ballad “How We Operate,” Tom Gray crooned like a British Chris Cornell, backed up by the lithe Ian Ball and Ben Ottewall as the rest of the band — slow and steady bassist Paul Blackbum and drummer Olly Peacock — jammed out behind him. But they’re so proficient with their sound that Gray could've been up there all alone. “The way that we've been speaking now/ I swear that we'd be friends, I swear/'Cos all these little deals go down with/Little consequences, we share, we share,” he sings, accentuated with strict staccato. The crowd stands on the tips of their toes.
They played a few slow jams -- including “Noticed,” which seethes like Smashing Pumpkins plowed into Weezer – and then Ball got up and addressed the audience. “I want everyone here to really get it on,” he said in his British drawl. “That would make me really happy.” Well, hell, us too. With that, the band changed it up, playing some songs from their debut album Bring It On, including their bluegrassy jam “78 Stone Wobble.”
That’s the kind of stuff that’s supposed to make your toes tap. But there was something melancholic about the performance, a sort of nostalgia for the glory days when punk and grunge had come up from behind and looked to wrest control of the mic from their R & B and classic rock forbearers.After a few minutes of an empty stage the band returned for an encore, much cheered by the audience as they crowded back in. “No need to be shy, get closer,” Ottewall encouraged.
Then he dug into “Fill My Cup,” leaning over his mic stand and cooing what could’ve been mistaken for a lullaby to the audience. It also sounded like a paean to the lost era of alt-rock radio: tastes sorta like Nirvana, has that tempered Soundgarden-style bass, a folksy tempo, leans on that Lollapalooza-era goth-style bad attitude. And in that moment, Gomez nearly perfectly embodied the promise of rock’s mid-’90s fade: mature yet reticent, overtly and proudly referential, bad motherfuckers looking for a good time. It’s a shame that whole vibe was never allowed to mature, held back by a shrinking demographic and a music world too ready for something with less zing and more pluck. Mellow, smooth, and synergistic to the max, the boys of Gomez seemed like a last beacon, almost gone, from the hope-shrouded days of the lost alternative revolution.