GOMEZ – WHATEVER’S ON YOUR MIND

Gomez open album number seven telling us how they’ve, “got options.” Well with three lead singers and four songwriters we already knew that. For almost 15 years their challenge has always been balancing so many options and still sounding like a coherent band. Whatever’s On Your Mind does the usual balancing act well, with the three voices and multitude of musical ideas still holding together under the Gomez banner. The opening Options a jaunty acoustic pop song that displays their strengths as a band and ought to serve them well on the charts. But therein seems to lie the difficulty, because from there on in we see a collection of songs that seems to pander to a lowest-common-denominator radio audience; songs that on the surface, offer us plenty on the music front, but little under the surface lyrically.  I Will Take You There offers up: “Please hold onto your heart of gold / While you struggle against the cold,” and if you didn’t cringe too much at that, try the chorus to Song in My Heart , you guessed it: “You’re the song in my heart”. If you can close your ears often enough to the lyrical laziness you could come to love Whatever’s On Your Mind, depending on what – or how little – was on your mind.

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