The picture laid out in the Gomez bio could be any average group of guys hanging out on a Saturday, maybe on their way to grab a few pints at the pub after a bit of football at the park – laughing, causal T-shirt attired, and relaxed.
That may be how they are still, or just maybe, these lads have grown into dapper young gentlemen, as indicated from a more recent photo shoot where their sophisticated, Avengers styled attire, dials in perfectly to their urban streets of London backdrop.
From the single “78 Stone Wobble” to the their third release, In Our Gun, Gomez has built up their boiling reputation for spicy pop, funky rock, and all out party-in-your-pants sound that’s sold out crowds from Australia and Japan to the shores of New York. Now on their fourth and yet unnamed album due later this Spring, they’ve been jetting around the states a bit to introduce their fans to the new stuff. After a raucous Philly show, drummer Olly Peacock took a few moments to chat about where the men in Gomez are in 2004.
Kaffeine Buzz: So you’re getting back to touring the U.S. How’s that going for you? You’re kind of in the beginning stages, aren’t you?
Olly Peacock: Yes, we went to Boston and New York, and Philly last night. So far it’s been great, good responses. It’s kind of nice to play the new ones and get reactions to them immediately.
KB: After getting tons of recognition and winning various music awards in the U.K, you have really proven yourselves. We haven’t gotten a copy of the new album yet, but since this is your fourth, is there anything you wanted to prove to yourselves in terms of getting into any new territory?
OP: Um…I don’t know really. We just try to concentrate on the music and see what happens from there. We’re just trying to build things all over the place, especially over here.
KB: The last time you recorded In Our Gun, you guys holed up in a manor house in Gloucester for around two months. What was your environment this time around?
OP: We built a studio in a place called Brighton, which is about an hour south of London. We thought we could just rehearse and record there with our own equipment. So the environment was a great big warehouse with green walls, and a bit smelly and things, hot in the summer and absolutely freezing in the winter. The thing was, it was so close to everybody that we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, at whatever time. So it was a cozy environment, really.
KB: It sounds like you’ve been able to reap some financial benefits to your success to build your own thing there.
OP: Yea, yea. It’s not particularly elaborate or fancy, but it’s perfect. It’s kind of like an extension of what we did for the first album we did in a garage, essentially. But that was pretty crappy. Now we’re in a warehouse, so it’s a nice move up.
KB: Speaking of doing your own thing, you guys have been in the procuding seat this whole time, right?
OP: We did all the recording and production ourselves. In the end, we wanted somebody to come in and mix it, so we brought in Chad Blaken. He did a lot of stuff with a guy Joe Arthur, and ahh…Pearl Jam, Cheryl Crow. We knew his wife who had engineered some stuff on previous albums, so we knew he could beef up the sound. We didn’t have the facilities to tweak it up anymore than we did.
KB: Right. Mixing is a whole other endeavor.
OP: He was excellent, and embellished it even more for us.
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KB: Some of your member’s previous influences are far from your group’s style, such as your and Ian’s love for metal when you were teenagers. As the drummer for the band, will any of that aggression come out on the new album?
OP: Probably unconsciously they do, because everyone likes to rock out. I think it’s probably more of a live thing though. Definitely on this album, it’s a lot faster and a lot louder, and a lot more rock going on there. I don’t know why that is really. It’s just what we felt like doing.
KB: As far as the lead vocal roles within the band, they’re split up between three people, which is pretty unique. How have you guys used that to give a different vibe to different songs?
OP: Basically it just means you can procreate whoever’s voice is more suitable to the song, whoever can key it up to sing higher on certain songs. Normally, whoever has come up with the song is the one that sings it. But it seems to be less of the case now. I even do a tiny bit of singing here and there on the album, which is kind of interesting.
KB: Is this a first?
OP: Yes, the first time. I’ve really been doing a lot of individual recordings myself for a long time, either at home or just down in the studio. Putting down some basic melodies, then get everybody else involved to rewrite the whole thing together.
KB: So what type of lyrical themes can we expect from the new stuff?
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OP: I think it will around what we’ve been through over the last couple of years. There’s been a lot of breaking up from long time girlfriends, moving around…Ian’s married now and living in L.A.
KB: Oh wow, really?
OP: Yea…he’s had a good and a hard time, going through various changes and things. Myself and Blackie have done the break up thing. So there’s kind of underlying things that represent that, but it’s an album of postivity. A lot of the songs were written, at least from my perspective in things I’ve written, were to try to get myself out of that.
KB: Kind of going into the next stage of your lives, moving on.
OP: Yea. You know how you wake up in the morning and you feel kind of shitty. You want to sit behind a piano or get the guitar and write something that’s gonna get you going instead of sitting around on your ass being a miserable bastard, you know?
KB: Yea, I do, I suppose. Although I can’t fit a piano in my apartment, which is depressing…anyway, in going into the next stage, do you feel now at this point of your career that you’re more grounded?
OP: I think we’re more focused and are grounded into that. We’re a lot more experienced in terms of the live show and presence on stage…in the studio we know about production tools and know how use them, write songs and rearrange them. That kind of crap. In some ways we’re a lot more mature and focused, and in other ways we’re the same old lunatics.
KB: You and Ian have known each other since you were kids. Do you have that “finish your sentences” type of chemistry?
OP: Between all of us there’s that type of thing. You have a lot of the same tastes and things like that. It’s not like we’re twins or anything like that, just cool with each other.
KB: So what have been some of your more enjoyable shows?
OP: On this tour, yesterday’s was pretty cool. The people in Philly are big music lovers…all sorts of ages and things. Recently we did a few gigs in London, which was great. Memorable ones were the festivals, things in Japan and Australia. We’ve played pretty big venues over there. Generally, we just take the piss out of the crowd and they take the piss out of us, and we just have a good time.
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KB: It must have been quite a transition going from a club to a sea of people at a festival like Reading.
OP: It’s very trippy. We played Glastonbury festival a few years ago now, where we played to about 40,000, or something like that. People just kept coming and coming as the sun was going down. It was all a bit romantic, but scary. You really, really gotta be shit-hot, taking care of businesses and all that.
KB: The show that you’re playing at the Fox in Boulder will be packed out as well. You’ve really got a good fan base here.
OP: I think we played down there a couple of times…the crowd was fantastic…a good place to turn up, you know?
Yes, we do. You heard the man. If you’ve got ticket, it’s the hot one as far as shows go for the beginning of this year. The vibe of their music will get you going, whether you’re mopping the floor at home or mopping the floor of Fox’s front stage with your head…or your ass. Fans will be hungry to hear the new stuff and sing along to their favorite songs. It will be one of the better parties, so we hope to see ya there.
