It's now (remarkably) 13 years since GOMEZ first secured instantaneous fame thanks to their Mercury music prize-winning debut back in 1998.
Summer 2011 sees Southport's very own indie veterans aiming for an emphatic return to the limelight following an 18 month hiatus spent in the pursuit of solo careers and side projects; a 'comeback' hopefully completed off the back of the release of their 7th studio album 'Whatever's On Your Mind'.
The Academy 2 is a solidly packed sell-out and the initial welcome is warm enough from an audience almost exclusively made up of of diehard long-time members of the band's huge fan-base. The scene is set; not only due to their strength as a live act, but also the epic intent of an extensive back catalogue, filled with anthem after anthem of huge and familiar classics.
True to form, the five-piece stormed straight out of the trap and straight for the bridge, launching into an uncompromising version of the skipping psycho-rock fave 'Shot Shot', complete with machine-gun rhythms. Not a second wasted, Ben Ottewell and his troops couldn't have signalled their intent to blow the roof off more clearly!
However the reaction from the fans was strangely less than enthusiastic (was it slack-jawed admiration? I don't think so) - even when Ball & Co. railroaded this dark yet familiar anthem forcefully into a whirlwind of subsonic, squealing feedback in order to kick-start THE massive and universally popular torch song 'Bring It On' - arguably the biggest rallying call the group have in their entire armoury of huge-sounding songs.
Whether it was a spontaneous on-stage response to the muted reception from a shellshocked audience, or part of the planned setlist, the subsequent rendition of 'Hangover' proved more appropriate.
And there was more than a hint of sarcasm about Ian Ball's tone as he dedicated Mercury single fave 'Whippin' Piccadilly' to "A sunny day in Manchester". Even this signature track, pulled out of the hat well ahead of the finale/encores where it should have been, couldn't save the irony from being wasted; Ball's words were met with the inevitable cheers, but his cynicism also prompted howls of derision along with the applause that preceded the(again, rather half-hearted) singalong.
From the new album, 'That Wolf', and 'Just As Lost As You' were met with plenty of blank looks from a crowd that greeted the fresh tunes with as much apathy as applause, this despite the massive efforts made by the group to crank up the feelgood factor during the writing and recording of their latest collection.
With Tom Gray now engrossed in his keyboard station, it was "Whatever's On Your Mind" that was the first of the brand-new songs to click. Sonic weight from the synths ensured that the title track of the newly-released record was an onstage big-hitter, but gritting their teeth, the entire group set about the delivery with full, grim determination, so hell-bent as a unit were they on dragging the punters' out of their collective flatline neutral state by taking their familiar style of epic songwriting to uncharacteristic extremes through sheer force of delivery. So much for the positive upbeat intent of the new record.
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It took another vintage blast from the back-catalogue to finally break the static resistance of the audience, whose trance-like apathy ended up submerged by the rollercoaster as 'Airstream Driver', with a little help from the lighting finally triggered the first animated response of the night, as the fans, along with their inhibitions, finally disappeared under a sea of adoring hands.
Now that the ball was rolling, momentum gathered effortlessly thanks to the new the new material, with the incidental, odd music-box intro heralding a melodic high-point during 'I Will Take You There'.
But there was still an exasperated retort from Gray, who felt compelled to remind the crowd where they were: "You're at a Gomez gig...." he declared with some degree of outrage ".......fucking dance!"
The full-glare of the lighting was once again turned on the audience again in a bid to get them jumping before some stomping Ball/Ottewell-inspired riffology finally caused a few more sparks to fly, before more cornerstone siren sounds from the vaults were unleashed, such as 'Army Dub' and 'How We Operate.'
The band sweated blood and admirably, opted not to meet audience indifference with a lacklustre display of their own. Though the band's priorities were enough to ensure that the songs from 'Whatever's On Your Mind' stood up as effectively as the rest in a live setting, it wasn't until the final third that the love began to flow. Prior to that, the diehard enthusiasm was largely missing despite the capacity turnout, and inevitably this had a negative bearing upon group morale.
Their best efforts and biggest hits ensured that, for Gomez the night still ended in triumph; but there was no mistaking the collective feelings of disillusionment that the band experienced either.
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