Australia saved Gomez.
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In 2005, after eight years together, the British indie rock quintet decided to break up.
But the reception they received on the main stage at Sydney’s Cockatoo Island Festival made them rethink the decision.
“We had run out of steam, as any train will at some point,” co-vocalist and songwriter Ian Ball explains.
“We were in Sydney and we were so tired – moaning and groaning.
“Then we had this show that was unbelievably awesome.
“I guess the crowd must have heard our mutterings backstage.
“It was a bizarre, yet wonderful moment – it could only happen in Australia.”
Gomez have repaid their Australian fans, with this month’s run of dates their 11th visit to our shores.
“We’ve always had wonderful gigs all over Australia,” Ball enthuses.
“From Sydney all the way to Perth, and up to Darwin.
“It’s kind of a second home, very much so.”
This month Gomez begin their “Quinceanera” tour, which marks 15 years as a group.
They are even allowing fans to vote online for what songs they would love to hear in each city.
“We are sent a list of the top 10 [tracks] and we sprinkle them throughout the set,” Ball, pictured far left, says.
“It’s been really fun playing some of the strange, abandoned orphan songs that we haven’t played for a while.”
They remain a live tour de force, with bassist Paul Blackburn and drummer Olly Peacock laying tight, winding rhythms and their three singers and guitarists – Ball, gravel-voiced Ben Ottewell and Tom Gray – adding a sublime mix of vocal textures and harmonies.
Their eclectic take on folk-rock is infused with unpredictable influences and genres – and they are always inventive.
“We’ve definitely improved – we’re far more streamlined,” Ball says.
“We’ve become slightly more ‘manly’, for want of a better word.
“We’ve become a more manly proposition - and tighter.
“We’re still having fun doing it.”
The line-up of Gomez has remained uncharged since their inception, when the group would jam for fun in a garage.
The then unnamed band played its first public gig in 1996 in Leeds at the Hyde Park Social Club on Ash Grove.
They left a sign out the front of the venue that read “Gomez in here” for a friend of theirs whose surname was Gomez, to let him know where the show was.
Punters took the sign to mean that the band’s name was Gomez.
The title stuck.
“We were just a bunch of friends recording in a garage,” Ball recalls.
“That’s what we would do when the pubs shut – we’d play some tunes.
“The nature of starting like that definitely benefitted [our longevity], and also not having a ‘master leader’.
“We do it however we want to do it.”
Now the band are a well-oiled machine.
So much so that they don’t even rehearse.
The members of Gomez live between the UK and US with Ball based in Los Angeles, Peacock in Brooklyn, and Blackburn, Gray and Ottewell in Brighton, England.
“We just use our sound checks to get everything together,” Ball says.
“We’ve played together so much that nowadays if you know in advance the songs and the requests, then you can listen to it on your own then we just turn up and do it.
“We’re consummate professionals.”
While the band have evolved across seven studio albums – the most recent was 2011’s Whatever’s On Your Mind – and are now an accomplished and prolific group of musicians, Ball admits that much of their popularity stems from their rough edges.
“Ironically, the thing that people love about the band is when it’s unwieldy and all over the place,” the singer explains.
“As you get older you naturally lose that because you get better at what you’re doing.
“I listen back to our first record [1998’s Bring It On] and I literally have to turn it off.
“I think, ‘Oh my god, what the f*** were we doing?’
“That’s just how I react – ‘why didn’t we get slightly in tune?’
“But that’s the shit that people love.
“Now we’ve become more polished – some people dig it, some people don’t.”
Gomez performs at Newcastle Panthers on Thursday, October 18, with support from Eagle and the Worm.
Tickets are on sale now through www.moshtix.com.au