How We Operate

Two months ago I rediscovered Gomez, the British rock group. I had been hearing their music on Wazee Internet Radio the last couple of years but they didn’t interest me enough to buy their CDs.


In the venerable Nissan I listen to the local Junior College alternative station. I kept hearing a terrific song but there were no DJs to tell me about the artist. I memorized some of the lyric and went to see Dread at my local music haunt. Dread wasn’t working so Spike did a quick search and handed me How We Operate by Gomez. I was stunned by the coincidence but felt all tingly inside—a good sign. A rediscovery. I couldn’t get the wrapper off fast enough.

The first track, Notice, is low key acoustic. Definitely worth coming back to but not what I remembered.

Track two: See the World. Wow! A very beautiful song. The only way to describe it is an amped-up David Gray. The vocal is uncanny in its similarity. This is a song I will listen to over and over for a long time. It reminds me of a long flight to Virginia Beach reading Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and listening to White Ladder on my headset. Transcendental.

Track three is the song I kept hearing and the one I was after. How We Operate starts with a mandolin or ukulele in an ocean of reverb. After a bit a banjo enters. Another bit and the rasp of frontman Ben Ottewell kicks in:

Calm down
And get straight
It's not our eyes
It's how we operate

You're true
You are
I'd apologize but it won't go very far

Please come here
Come right on over
And when we collide we'll see what gets left over

A little joy
A little sorrow
And a little pride so we won't have to borrow
Wherever you lead, I'll follow

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

All the songs on the album are about relationships—like Girlshapedlovedrug a humorous yet sad up-tempo song about love for a difficult girl with mood swings—but this one is about an argument and a compromise. How people disagree and work things out.

As for the sound, it’s unmistakable once you hear it. A big rock sound (guitars and drums) with the somewhat robotic use of banjo and ukulele. At least this song. No two sound alike. Tear Your Love Apart sounds like a big Pearl Jam ballad when Pearl Jam cared about what they were doing. Don’t Make Me Laugh highlights the one element that seems common to all songs on this CD: intricate voice harmonies. That and craftsmanship. They seem to care about their music and musicianship. Refreshing. And typical of a band that has met critical acclaim but mixed sales success.