BY MIKE METTLER FEBRUARY 27, 2018
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Bring It On, Gomez’s Mercury Music Prize-winning debut album, UMe will be releasing a remastered super-deluxe 4CD set with an accompanying remastered double LP release on May 18, 2018. (The digital release will arrive on April 20, 2018.)
The SoundBard has been following Gomez ever since this stellar debut album was released in April 1998 — “Get Miles” and “Get Myself Arrested” are among my favorite Bring It On tracks — and I’ve also seen this kinetic British five-piece band perform mesmerizing live shows numerous times over the ensuing years, so I’m very much looking forward to hearing the full scope of this box set.
The 4CD 20th Anniversary Edition of Bring It On contains the original classic album remastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios. It also features 35 previously unreleased tracks including 25 demos recorded between January 1996 and August 1997. Thirteen of these tracks are appearing on an official Gomez release for the first time, such as covers of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” and “T-Bone Walker’s Mean Old World,” plus the band’s 1998 Glastonbury performance and BBC sessions. The box set package includes a 10,000-word essay by music writer Paul Stokes, with new interviews with the band and those close to them.
Meanwhile, the 2LP version of Bring It On will offer red and yellow colored vinyl editions as well as thde standard black vinyl edition, all of them appearing in gatefold packaging.
The original cover art
Twenty years on,you can hear the echoes of Bring It On in much of the music that followed it: not just in the works of self-professed Gomez admirers like Elbow, but in those who sought to combine indie and roots music with lo-fi electronics via a modern experimental sensibility with a love of the past. “No other record captures that period so perfectly,” says Elbow’s Guy Garvey. “The concerns of the songs, the stories, the experimental sounds. It was so brave for a band to record themselves at that time: It allowed a direct and undiluted account of the band as aspirational, big-hearted friends in love with making music and each other. It dared us to record ourselves. But they did it first. It’s the most deserving recipient of the Mercury Prize in its history: a breathlessly ambitious and lovingly crafted masterpiece. It should be called Bring It ‘The Fuck’ On.”
Bring It On emerged from the chemistry-combo of four lads jamming in a Southport garage, plus the fella they met at university. Between them, Ian Ball, Ben Ottewell, Tom Gray, Paul Blackburn, and Olly Peacock created something that was far more than the sum of its parts. “Gomez came along at exactly the right moment,” says British DJ Steve Lamacq, who championed the band on his Radio 1 show. “After Britpop had collapsed in on itself, there was a massive hole on the Evening Session, waiting to be filled. But what we found was people reacting against the commerciality of the Britpop wave, and heading off on all sorts of strange tangents. The audience was really receptive to sounds that maybe wouldn’t have fitted in a few years earlier.”
Gomez hadn’t even recorded with the intention of making an album, which is perhaps why Bring It On sounds so unforced. The basis of the album was seven tracks recorded on an ancient 4-track recorder. The band’s label, Hut, had to use the home recordings – for practical reasons. “They couldn’t recreate those recordings because they’d done them in one of their dad’s garages on the four-track, and just after they’d finished doing the last one, the thing broke,” explains Hut’s David Boyd. “So we decided it needed a little bit of mixing and embellishment, but not a lot, and they trotted off to Liverpool to do the touch-ups, but to all intents and purposes that was Bring It On.”
In Liverpool, engineer Ken Nelson awaited them, and helped them turn those seven tracks into a whole album. “They’d have an idea and would look to me to make it work,” Nelson confirms. “Their home-learned skills transferred well to the studio, and I believe we learned so much from each other. I’d never worked with a band who were so creative before. It was truly exciting for me.”
Chris Martin admired Bring It On so much that Coldplay hired Ken Nelson to produce their first album, (He went on to produce three for them overall.) Bring It On went on to win 1998’s Mercury Music Prize, beating Pulp, Massive Attack, Cornershop, and The Verve, with the judges describing the album as “an intriguing blend of swamp blues, bar-room rock, and eerie power.”
Bring It On remains the album Gomez is best-known for in the U.K. Though it was only the starting point for a spectacular career, it remains the landmark: The introduction to their singular nature. Hence the deluxe reissue. Hence the forthcoming anniversary tour on which many of the shows – including an appearance at the Royal Albert Hall – sold out in moments. Twenty years later? Once again, bring it on.
To that end, Gomez will be playing Bring It On in its entirety on all of their upcoming tour dates in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and North America. U.S. dates appear below.
Gomez bring it live.
GOMEZ – BRING IT ON
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
06/05/18 Toronto, ONT, Canada – Danforth Music Hall
06/07/18 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
06/08/18 Boston, MA – Royale
06/09/18 Washington, DC – Lincoln Theatre
06/10/18 Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel
06/12/18 Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
06/13/18 Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom
06/15/18 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
06/16/18 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
06/19/18 Aspen, CO – Belly Up Aspen
06/20/18 Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre
06/24/18 Oakland, CA – Fox Theatre
06/26/18 Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
06/27/18 Vancouver, BC, Canada – Commodore Ballroom
06/28/18 Seattle, WA – The Showbox
TICKET INFORMATION
**U.S. dates onsale beginning Friday, March 2, 2018 at 10 a.m. ET
**Fan pre-sale begins Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 10 a.m. Local Time at Gomez.shop.ticketstoday.com/
GOMEZ SOCIALS
