Single Review by Mark Bayross
Gomez will always be remembered for scooping the Mercury Music Prize with their debut album and must have thought they were in la-la land when they found themselves immediately filed under CAN DO NO WRONG on the desk of every music critic in the land.
The flipside, of course, is the pressure to follow with a record of striking originality and mind-blowing power. On hearing the beats and samples of opening track “Machismo”, I thought they had taken on that very challenge.
However, the acoustic strum of DO’S AND DON’TS proved me wrong, despite the claustrophobic, underwater feel. By track three, TOUCHIN” UP, the funky beats had been abandoned altogether in favour of strings and things had become more epic, but slightly less tuneful. More Pearl Jam, actually.
WASTER is the comedy song – it’s jangly guitars and oh-so-whacky lyrics about extraterrestrial living reminiscent of the long-defunct and probably long-forgotten band Eat.
The final track, THE DAJON SONG, is 13½ minutes of ebbing and flowing guitars over a slow, smoky beat, and manages to engage the listener for the most part. The band are probably very proud of it, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt: its more psychedelic than jazz. It could do with being about…ooh…nine minutes shorter.
So a pleasant enough off-kilter twang, but hardly pushing the envelope of sonic innovation. It’s a shame they couldn’t have kept more elements of the winning formula of the opening track – the length and monotony of THE DAJON SONG kind of swamps the immediacy and catchiness of MACHISMO.
More beats, less bluster, please.
