Gomez interview

AS GOMEZ HEAD TO AUSTRALIA TO CELEBRATE THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF DEBUT ALBUM, BRING IT ON, VOCALIST/GUITARIST IAN BALL REMINISCES WITH ROB TOWNSEND

“I can see why people like that album, because there isn’t really anything else around like it. It’s very rough and innocent-sounding, and the sort of thing that you can only really pull off once because, once you learn stuff, it’s hard to recapture the innocence.”

Bring It On, Gomez’s debut long-player, was a huge success upon its release in 1998, scooping the much-coveted Mercury Music Prize in the UK and launching the career of a band that, four more studio albums on, is still going strong. Now, the Brits celebrate Bring It On’s tenth anniversary with a special live performance of it at The Metro. “We did the show in England first. A promoter just phoned us up and said: ‘Do you guys want to do it?’” vocalist/guitarist Ian Ball explains on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “At first we were like: ‘Is that going to be good? Is it going to be bad? Is it going to be weird?’ We had no idea, but we were like: ‘Fuck it, let’s give it a go.’” While Ball says he is generally keener on looking forward rather than back, he admits the first show was so great they couldn’t resist doing some more. “It was really strange, nostalgic, fun and kind of nice. [Doing the Bring It On shows] isn’t really for us; you know what I mean? We’d rather be doing new stuff, but it was a huge album for a lot of people. Since then, people have got married, had kids and then divorced. Some people have moved continents. All this shit had been going on for a lot of people and this brought them all together again. So it was like we were doing a public service.”

Following the success of these nostalgic gigs in the UK, the band is heading this way to perform the album in its entirety for its Australian fans. Through years of being played live, the songs have evolved to such an extent that trying to recreate them as they were originally written caused a lot of head-scratching in rehearsals. “If we were to rearrange the songs now with the knowledge gained over years of making records, they’d be totally different. So we ended up trying to resist the urge to change things. We had gotten so used to the newer arrangements that we had to unlearn all of that stuff.”
There were some aspects though, that the band couldn’t resist revamping. “We’ve properly re-sampled the badly cut-up old samples,” Ball explains, his English accent ever so slightly tinted with an American twang picked up from living in The States. “We’re wizards at that stuff now, so it sounds much clearer. Most people at the gig will be too drunk to notice though,” he chuckles.

While they have played songs like Whippin’ Piccadilly and Get Myself Arrested more times than they can count, the anniversary gigs have afforded Gomez the opportunity to roll out some long-forgotten tracks. “We’d never, ever played Bubble Gum Years live, because it was too difficult. It had been hiding at the end of the album for ten years, never doing anything. Now, all of a sudden, it comes back to life.”

Looking ahead, Ball explains that the Bring It On show and support slot for The Black Keys are unlikely to be the last we see of Gomez this year. A brand new album is set to be released in the next few months, and the band is keen to revisit Australia as soon as possible. “The gigs are always really cool there. Maybe there is something in the way our live shows are based around getting drunk, having a good time and losing your inhibitions for a couple of hours. That is very much the attitude in Australia.” By the affection in Ball’s voice, it is clear that this country clearly holds a special place in the band’s heart. He explains it is a long-standing love affair. “We didn’t really have any expectations the very first time that we came over. We were pretty young at the time and it was magical. The summer was just starting to break, everyone was really friendly to us, we had a bit of spare time to check the place out and drink some wine and we were like: ‘This place is fucking awesome.’