Sunday 26th April 2009 @ Academy, Bristol

I last saw Gomez live 10 years ago when the band were touring their second album Liquid Skin, during which in a spontaneous moment of crowd bonding, members of the audience took off their shoes and waved them in the air. A move we all thought would be appreciated by a band known for being a bit ‘out there’. Hmmmm…how wrong we were. The next week in an NME tour diary, the band dissed the audience for being ‘weird’. I took it personally and lost interest in them after that.

Anyway, several albums on and Gomez are back in Bristol to promote new record A New Tide. Would one night at the Academy exorcise the ghosts of the past? Well the first 45 minutes did anyway. They started energetically, incorporating songs from the new album with back catalogue hits. Initially the three frontmen all worked well together sharing vocal duties with Tom Gray providing the between song repartee. There were rapturous receptions for classics such as Rhythm And Blues Alibi and Whippin’ Picadilly but then it all went wrong.

It is fair to say that some of Gomez’s later work is weaker than their early recordings and when combined with the lack of stage presence of all but one member of the band, they failed to hold the audience attention and chit-chat ensued. Co-frontmen Ian Ball and Ben Ottewell looked bored by the end. Even during the encore and what should have been exciting and rousing tunes the crowd were generally quite static.

When on-form there is no doubt that Gomez are talented musicians responsible for some of the most unique tracks of the 90s (case in point 78 Stone Wobble which they didn’t even bother to play) but tonight Gomez were going through the motions; they just turned up, played and left. Disappointing.

www.gomeztheband.com

Hazel Goodfellow