This is the first time I've seen or heard THE ZUTONS. As Paul McCartney once said of his former group: "We were just a good little band" and much the same can be said of these guys, not that I'm comparing them to the Beatles because frankly that would just be lazy journalism.
The Zutons blast out quite a formidable three quarter hour set which is punctuated and apostrophized by the quirky saxophonist Abi Harding. There are elements of Funk, Jazz, Soul, Bluegrass, Two Tone and a dicing of theatrical comedy in this group's sound. The wide range of influences gel in grandiose style and the crowd are treated to a full set of catchy off-kilter pop songs that prove contagious and have the crowd singing along.
A few years ago the music press would have had us believe that Jack White grabbed a shovel, dug up the corpse of blues and brought it back to life all by himself. However years earlier GOMEZ'S first album, famously recorded in a garage, had the blues shakin' all over it.
Like all bands that produce truly outstanding debuts Gomez have struggled under the shadow of ‘Bring It On’, having won the Mercury music prize shortly after its release and consequently found fame and a place on every coffee table music fans IKEA CD rack.
In hindsight their consequent albums stand-up well: ‘Liquid Skin’ was excellent, a well produced effort almost on a par with its predecessor while ‘In Our Gun’ was interesting and experimental although commercially it bombed so perhaps predictably ‘Split The Difference’ seems a conscious effort to return to the earlier sound hence maybe should have been re-titled ‘Spot The Difference’.
It's sad that in every Gomez review I’ve ever read I’ll be informed that they look like a bunch of Geology students that don’t have anything to say. Frankly who cares what they look like and most bands have little or nothing to say while more to the point those that do seldom talk about anything interesting.
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How can we describe the Gomez sound to those haven’t heard it? It seems noticeable that this band have drawn a crowd of people that aren’t overly familiar with their material. As a British band their influences seem to mainly be drawn from the country they are playing in tonight: Beck, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, Pavement and of course the Delta Blues. They also share an interest in noodling electronics in a comparable vein to Radiohead and the Beta Band.
Gomez play a set with a nice blend of newer material mixed into the older favourites; admittedly the sheer amount of the latter outweighs the former considerably but it seems tonight they are making sure the crowd go home happy.
Onstage Gomez are an interesting blend of characters: the outgoing Ian Ball works up the crowd, Ben Ottewell is rather subdued making up for this with his dog rough gravel pit bark and Tom Gray looks quite simply stoned and seems to be concentrating on staying in tune.
Stand-out moments include the catchy ‘Gonna Get Myself Arrested’, ‘Rhythm & Blues Alibi’ which is as clever a put down of booty-shaking MTV as any and a storming reggae metal version of ‘Fill My Cup’’. The three-part vocal harmonies on ‘Las Vegas Dealer’ are great and it would be nice to see them use this trick more often. The closing song is, rather predictably, ‘Whippin’ Piccadilly’.
It seems fair to conclude tonight that Gomez won’t change you’re life profoundly. However, with a kick-ass two hour set like this they definitely make it a little better…
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