“Failure“
from the album Who Goes There
2007
iTunes
Bands blessed with more than one singer/songwriter belong to the past. Gone are the days of Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac and their glorious kind.
The contemporary British band Gomez gives that truism a hard shake. They’ve got no fewer than three great vocalist/writers jockeying for position in their ranks. Given that, it’s a surprise no one from this decade-old act recorded a solo album. Until now.
According to Ian Ball — the softest of Gomez’s singers — his debut came about more through accident than ambition. Drunken jams with friends in his adopted home of Los Angeles earlier this year led to casual recording sessions. The music benefits from that unfussy approach, though the result hardly seems slack. Who Goes There stitches beautiful acoustic pieces together, extending Gomez’s love for American singer-songwriters.
To stress the point, Ball made sure to list the state-side hometown of every musician who played on the CD.
The ballad-heavy music feels homespun, stressing acoustic guitars and light electric pianos, with just the odd synth or percussion effect thrown in. The spare musicianship suits Ball’s sweet, high voice. He’s impossibly boyish, though hardly a lyrical naif.
In “The Elephant Pharmacy,” Ball announces, “I’m not high enough/ let’s go shopping for drugs” — the specific kind he desires would “keep a full-grown elephant tranquilized.” In “Failure,“ Ball offers his own “Mrs. Robinson” tale, though his has an embarrassing result in bed. “Don’t let a little failure get you down,” the older woman tells him.
To up the confessional tone, the production leaves lots of air around Ball’s voice, heightening the intimacy. Like Ball’s work with Gomez, his solo songs have both a tumble-down ease and a melodic pull that never fails to charm.