Gomez- How We Operate

This is a song about conflict resolution.  Wow, I just made that sound about as much fun as a mandatory seminar on OSHA regulations.  It's a song about meeting someone halfway, it's about working things out and that's something we all need to hear occasionally.  Maybe you're having a spat with your significant other, maybe someone cut you off on the interstate, maybe your coworker keeps taking your post-it notes off your desk and not returning them, and if they do it again you might lose your mind!  Forgiveness, that's what this is about, meeting someone halfway.  That's something we all need.  Kind of like OSHA regulations, but much more fun to listen to.

Gomez is sort of a British version of Wilco.  Which is to say, they are rock band with roots in blues, country and folk that sometimes get a little weird.  They use programed hip-hop beats, run guitars through all sorts of sound effects and use odd instruments.  Their songs frequently have odd tempo changes and shift keys, but are still catchy enough to fit into the mid-tempo rock category.  This is the long way of saying, they are right up my alley.  Some of you may know Gomez from the song "See the World" which was featured tons of medical shows and dramas.

How We Operate is the title track to the album "How We Operate", and it's one of the more complex songs I've heard in a while.  For those of you keeping track at home this song has:

1) Drums

2) Bass 

3) 2 Electric Guitars

4) Acoustic Guitar

5) Mandolin

6) Banjo

Yup, that's 7 instruments, and it's still only 99 cents on itunes!!  Wow!  What a bargain!  (note: I am not a paid sponsor of itunes or Gomez...but I could be!)  There's also strings towards the end of the song, just to further complicate things.  The song starts out with the mandolin playing the rhythm and the banjo picking the lead.  This creates a really eerie sound.  It picks up when the acoustic guitar, bass and drums come in mid-way through the first verse.  The chorus is all guitars and brings in the full rock sound.  The lead guitar keeps up most of the banjo work for the rest of the song.  One of the cool things that happens later in the song is the lead guitar plays the same notes as the banjo, over the banjo.  It sounds odd, but it creates a really cool sound.  The song goes back and forth from that eerie sounding verse to the guitar rock of the chorus.  The song also ends with a whisper, which is also kind of eerie and weird.  The best lyrics are in the chorus:

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

That's Gomez in a nutshell, odd instruments, cool changes midway through a song, and a really catchy chorus.  Gomez is one of those bands I listen to and wonder "why are they not a bigger band?"  I have a theory on this: they use 3 lead singers (2 guys do the majority of the singing, but piano/guitar player chimes in every once in a while).  And people identify a band by the voice of the singer, not the instruments.  So if a band has more than one lead singer, people have trouble identifying the band.  More on this theory later as it relates to Van Halen and U2 (U2 is one of the few bands that can be identified through their sound and not the voice of their lead singer...but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Click here to see the video. It's pretty cool Gotta love youtube.  You can find anything.  It's like if MTV or VH1 actually played music videos!