Gomez
Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline
(Virgin)
Don’t laugh; in England, there is such a number you can call if you wish to report a shopping cart that has been left alone. Unfortunately, the title might be the most interesting thing about Gomez’s latest.
Straight outta Sheffield, the post-blooze and Rubber Soul mixup of their debut Bring It On went next-big-thing via the Mercury Prize, while a solid second release, Liquid Skin, managed to keep the quartet’s forward momentum by heading down darker, spacier penny lanes. With fans on both sides of the pond now muttering “Gomez” with ever-increasing levels of reverence (and occasionally, bile), this 15-track compilation feels like market exploitation and the dire nature of these re-mixes, leftovers, b-sides and one-off goofs bears that out: Odds and Sods it ain’t.
The “gem” of the set is Gomez’s version of the Fabs’ “Getting Better”, which was used in Phillips Electronics’ TV ads, though is apparently different from a version that made the Napster rounds earlier this year. Either way, it’s so bland that only the hardest core Gome-heads could possibly care which is which. The most compelling selections are, not surprisingly, alternate versions of songs that appeared on their first two records: “We Haven’t Turned Around” gets fed through the “Strawberry Fields” blender and “78 Stone Wobble” becomes “78 Stone Shuffle”, transformed into a skittery tic during a live BBC take. Beyond that pair and a couple of semi-interesting b-sides (“Rosemary” and “Emergency Surgery”) there is little of the usual Gomez buzz. After all, how much can one reasonably expect from a disc that begins with a track titled “Shitbag 9”?
Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline, then, is like smoking the seeds and stems left behind after you got baked on Bring It On and Liquid Skin. Yeah, that is a headache you feel coming on.
Washington City Paper, October 2000
