The Moon Club, Cardiff
Tues 4 Dec
words: DARREN HOWELLS
There was a period after the disappointment of Oasis’s Be Here Now album that another northern band drawing clear influence from classic artists – if a little earlier and a little more American – were being touted as the next kings of British rock music.
Gomez’s Mercury Music Prize-winning debut should have been the platform to mainstream success, however, the varying degrees of fanfare to great Ben Ottewell and Noel Gallagher’s debut solo albums in 2011 is a clear enough indicator that things didn’t quite work out as many expected – the band probably about two years too late to build a large enough fanbase to carry them through 10 years of increasingly diminishing returns (which is probably why they’ve continued to put out quality albums since).
For all Gomez’s great pop and inventive musicianship, for many it has always been about Ben’s Bluesy, gravelly voice on more restrained efforts like We Haven’t Turned Around and Here Comes The Breeze which has retained their loyalty – an album of his songs which didn’t deviate too far from his Gomez formula was always likely to be positively received therefore.
In a stripped-back live setting, his vocal was expectedly dominate yet never overbearing – a necessary tenderness and naturalness on heartfelt songs such as title track Shapes & Shadows (“she’s so fine…shapes and shadows and she is mine”). The album has unfairly been compared to the likes of David Gray, but it is a reminder that there was a time when a meditative singer-songwriter album of this ilk would have headed straight to the chart’s summit; it seems Ben is always a little late to the party.
Given the reaction to gentle and sincere deliveries of Gomez classics such as Free To Run as well as lesser celebrated numbers like Hamoa Beach, it was clear this predominantly older crowd were amongst the minority to have stuck with the band since 1998 – few of us would have expected then that we’d have had the opportunity to see one of this country’s finest vocalists in such an intimate live setting 14 years on.