Ever wondered what rock stars do in their spare time? If you’re Ian Ball from the British band Gomez, you learn “dreadful” songs from the soundtrack records to Elvis’s film career and perform them live for surprised punters in Los Angeles bars.
“I was at this yard sale and this guy had a shitload of vinyl he was selling for nothing,” explains Ball. “So I just bought about three or four boxes of vinyl. There were a lot of turkeys, but in it was almost the entirety of Elvis’s soundtracks, which I had never really investigated before because I just heard they were diabolical.” Ball says he started listening to them and soon became curious how “one of the greatest singers of all time was reduced to singing old MacDonald had a fucking farm and all this kind of shit”. The end result is that Ball picked the 12 worst songs and performed them around his new home, Los Angeles, just for a laugh.
Not the ideal preparation for Gomez’s new album, one could argue, but Ball had a lot of fun by all accounts, something Gomez is learning how to do again. Their last album Split the Difference was released in 2004 to an indifferent response, while their label was in the process of closing shop and individual band members were suffering relationship break-ups.
The band was in turmoil and, for a while, it felt like it might be coming to an end. Then Dave Matthews’s label ATO came to the rescue with an offer to release a live album. Ball described ATO’s interest as a “beautiful opportunity” and one that gave the band hope.
Fast-forward to 2006 and we have a new Gomez album How We Operate and a world tour. Ball says the new album is “a bunch of tunes trying to explain how people get along with each other, or don’t”. It is one of the most cohesive albums that Gomez has made, but sees the band ditching its fondness for jamming and improvisation, choosing instead to record tight three-minute pop songs stripped of anything “unnecessary”. The end result is the most optimistic album Gomez has ever recorded, one that will win them many new fans and probably ostracise many old ones.
“Our tendency is never to repeat the same record,” says Ball. He adds that its cohesiveness can be put down to how it was recorded — producer Gil Norton has a reputation for being able to batter things into shape at high speed.
“We did it like real bands make records, where you practise and rehearse,” says Ball. “We didn’t have time to mess around, we had to get things into shape before it happened. We had 12 songs to record in six weeks.”
Gomez are currently touring the European festival circuit, which will be followed by an Australian tour. Hopefully the lads from Southport will find some time to sneak South Africa into their busy schedule.