While for most bands the second album’s the hardest, for Gomez it’s four that’s got them scratching their heads. When their tequila addled debut, “Bring It On”, captured the UK's imagination and won them the 1998 Mercury Music Prize, it was a no brainer as to what the follow-up should sound like. But after six years and three albums of sleepy-eyed laments and wistful guitar slides, they’ve decided it’s time to move on.
They haven’t gone far. “Split The Difference” isn’t a Goldfrapp style conversion to burlesque electro. They’re still perma-stoned and world weary; still playing beaten-up acoustics and analogue gadgets they were found in a pawn shop. Yet they’ve strayed just far enough from the beaten track to Old El Paso to get completely lost.
They’ve tried a bit of everything. “Catch Me Up” is Strokes-like lip-curling. “Don’t Know Where We’re Going” rocks like a thing possessed by the manic spirit of Queens Of The Stone Age. “Chicken Out” sounds like Supergrass, “Silence” sounds like The Dandy Warhols when they sound like The Stones and “Where Ya Going” sounds like the music to the snooker. And there’s not a bad song among them. It’s just that none of them sound like Gomez.
In laying down their sombreros, they’ve lost their strongest asset: the romance of a one horse border town at sundown. Without it they could be mistaken for just about any slacker with a guitar, a garage and an old pair of Converse Allstars. For all the off-beat melodies and sense of adventure, the only time they’re unmistakably Gomez is when Ben Ottewell comes on all woozy with his Whiskey and Marlboro Red croak on the sweetly punch-drunk “Me You And Everybody”.
“Split The Difference” is an apt title for such a dichotomy of an album. In terms of songs, it’s full of eccentric masterstrokes. As an album it’s so random and erratic that it’s neither a brave step forward nor a disastrous wrong turn; just an entertaining detour while they workout where they’re actually going.
