[3/5] For the past eight years, Mercury Prize-winning Brits Gomez have nursed their eclectic American rock fetish to compelling, if bipolar, effect, and on their fifth studio album, How We Operate, the group keep their winningly inconsistent formula intact. Though singer/guitarist Ian Ball's songs flirt with jaunty, danceable pop (see "Girlshapedlovedrug"), they're often the more subdued of this bunch: "Notice," the album's opener, is a delicate beauty; a downcast hippie-rock lament that builds to a lovely, string-backed resolution. Meanwhile (see the Southern-rock ballad "Chasing Ghosts With Alcohol"), singer/guitarist Ben Ottewell's songs are stirring, sometimes-raucous affairs powered by the emotional depth of his backwoods croak and colored by banjo, lap-steel and harmonica accents. Sharply produced by Pixies/Foo Fighters cohort Gil Norton, How We Operate shuffles between exuberance and wistfulness like a drunk stumbling through a crowded bar--and yet, oddly enough, it's also one of the more coherent albums in Gomez's career.
(ATO) Luke O'Neil
 Official Website: http://www.atorecords.com
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