It’s Gomez, Jim. But not as we know them, Captain.

“We had a very specific idea of what we had to do with the record. We were going to try and make something that fucking Americans would play on radio. Simple as that. That’s exactly what we tried to do."

"I think it turned out really well. Considering how quickly and hectically it was done. It wasn’t like we were kidding ourselves when we started it. We knew what we were going to do. We went for the songs, as opposed to the bells and whistles. Much to the chagrin of some of our old fans. It’s not even recognisable, which is kind of cool. The first time I played it to some friends of mine they assumed it wasn’t us. Which I was very pleased about. Love that. God, the last thing I want to do is make anything that sounds like something we’ve done before.”

Which is the most plausible excuse for a sell out I’ve ever come across. However, the more Ian Ball talks about the new album, “How We Operate” (out May 2nd), the circumstances around its production, and the calculations behind this very deliberate step, the more my inner-fan succumbs to this turn in the seven album adventure that is Gomez’s discography.

“It was time. Now we have a record company that can get things done, let’s do something that they can do something with. There was no point in signing up with this record label and then putting together a bunch of psychedelic noodles. There was no point in doing that. This (album) is like an experiment in trying not to do that.

Life at ATO is a far, far rosier place than it was in the globally corporate bullshit that Virgin became. It started off really well at Virgin, everything was really cool. Then it just went horrendously tits-up. By the end of it, we didn’t know anybody left at Virgin. They fired all the cool people and kept all the businessmen. The businessmen, were like, “You guys are bad for business, you’ve got to go”, and we were like “Yes! Let us go, please!” Because we owed them a few more records, but thank fuck our lawyers managed to get us out of it. Then the ATO brigade came rolling into town, and we were “This is far more like it”. It’s great. Everybody’s on the case. It’s like having a record company for the first time in like six years. It’s a shame, because there were some great people at Virgin, but they all got fired for being cool.”

It’s best not to look at this release as a departure for Gomez. Forget the “old stuff’s better than the new stuff” debate. If that’s you’re opinion, you missed the whole point of the band in the first place. The basis of Gomez music isn’t the gimmicky instruments, or endless wallowing in sound, it’s about new directions and new challenges. Or maybe it’s just about running as far and fast from boredom as possible.

“The last year or so have been very obvious career things for us you know. I would be surprised if people are surprised by this record. It’s weird that people are surprised that it is the way it is. But that’s cool. It’s (still) about the music, but it’s just about a different kind of music. We’ve always been the kind of band that gets very bored very quickly of things that have been done before. That’s why our songs have always taken weird left turns, because of the boredom aspect."

"We once had a set list consisting entirely of vowels, not consonants. Sometimes we have crossword clues to it. Crossword clues set lists are pretty good. Then sometimes diagrams, pictures set list. It’s amazing how mad you go with 12 hours free in Wisconsin. Hence, the have to get on American radio thing, for our own sanity if nothing else. Then we don’t have to play little shitholes in Wisconsin anymore, because they really do sap the soul.

We’ve been living on the road, and just slowly dying. It’s getting ridiculous now. We’re getting 8000 people to a show in San Francisco, but the fucking bastard radio stations just wont play anything we do. So we had to sort that out. It’s very cold and calculated. Normally bands would never really confess to this kind of shit, but that’s what we did. And I don’t care, it had to be done.”

The songs are still deceptively intricate, with the onion effect in full force on each re-listen. Sure its sounds slightly tame, but in a way that most commercially played bands would still give their souls for. So is the sound of “How We Operate” purely a result of this chase for dollars, and not true to the Gomez ethos? With visions of the guys running around back halls screaming “Show me the money!” in dainty British accents running through my head, I had to ask whether Ball was happy with the outcome.

“Bit’s of it I really like. Some of it is really good. It ended up sounding the way it did because it was very quickly recorded. We didn’t have time. Once the song was written and figured out, that was pretty much it. We didn’t worry about trying to put all the freaky crazy instrumentation stuff that we always used to do because we didn’t have time. We were too busy working out how to make the song as strong as possible, and not necessarily go overboard in the Brian Wilson area of the world. We’d already done that, and it was like “Let’s see if we can do something simple that we can play live.” It’s good because we don’t have to rehearse, because we know how to play it. In the past we’ve had to do three weeks rehearsal just trying to figure out how to play a fucking song. This machine doing that, this machine doing this, and then you trigger that, I’ll trigger this. By the end of it it’s like “God, I wish we could just play AC/DC songs.”

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