(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
The excellent EP Machismo (Virgin, 2000) contains the ballads
Do's And Don'ts (the blues via Tim Buckley)
and Machismo (dub reverbs over hip hop beats),
and the 13-minute psychedelic jam The Dajog Song.
Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline (Hut, 2000) is a collection of
leftovers, rarities and outtakes, including the anthemic
Bring Your Lovin' Back Here and the 13-minute psychedelic suite
The Dajon' Song.
Annoyingly, In Our Gun (Virgin, 2002) offers more of the same and the
quality is not much higher than the leftovers released on Hotline.
Basically, there is no difference between a Gomez leftover and finished Gomez
song. If they had made only one album instead of three, that album would be
worth listening. Make it an EP and it would be a promising debut.
Alas, diluted over the course of three albums their art is simply tedious.
Other that aiming for the charts with a much more commercial and upbeat
sound (Shot Shot), there is little here that is worth listening to
more often than Britney Spears. And, if nothing else, Britney Spears is cute.
Continuing the slide into irrelevance,
Split The Difference (Virgin, 2004) offers another parade of cliches
taken from the most stereotyped bands of Brit-pop.
Even when they rock out (Don't Know Where Were Going, Chicken Out, Do One), they sound anemic.
Their mediocrity is epitomized by opener Do One, which is only three minutes
long but feels like an eternity; which makes the six-minute
Sweet Virginia the pop-blues equivalent of Chinese torture.
Out West (ATO, 2005) is a double-disc live album.
How We Operate (ATO, 2006) is a collection of stale, predictable songs,
the least tedious being perhaps Tom Gray's Girlshapedlovedrug.
A New Tide (ATO, 2009) is another album built around a general idea
of a song that never materializes into a song but only into that recursive
general idea. It's not even background muzak, just annoying rehearsals for
something that is never delivered.
Ditto for Whatever's On Your Mind (2011).
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