Gomez: Split The Difference : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Immediate acclaim has long-term disadvantages. Britain's Gomez reaped so much praise upon arrival - including a Mercury Prize (a kind of English critics' Grammy) for their 1998 debut, Bring It On - that their pop-wise spin on American roots music now seems underappreciated. It's also a little less fresh. In a White Stripes world, Bring It On's chicken-shack-Radiohead inventions can sound self-consciously adult. Gomez still can't help overreaching: The cover here of Junior Kimbrough's "Meet Me in the City" aspires to dirt and weirdness (voodoo-chant vocals, jungle-telegraph percussion) but is ultimately not enough of either. On most of Split the Difference, their fourth studio album, Gomez pour on the punch that makes their live shows such a gas. The fuzz 'n' swing in "Do One" proves that Gomez are a better rock band than they've been willing to admit, while the plantation-Zombies ballad "Sweet Virginia" and the taut gleam of "These 3 Sins" reaffirm that those '98 hosannas were not just wishful thinking.