Liquid Skin (Gomez, 1999)

Gomez is one of those bands I've picked up piecemeal throughout my adult life. The earliest hearing was back in college radio when their debut album, Bring It On, hit and did well. It was pleasant enough. A little strange, but not too weird. Three distinct singers, one a little John Mayer-before-Mayer-happened (and better anyway). I didn't give the band much thought after that, but while many/most of the bands of 1998 spiraled down into the "lost bands" file, Gomez was a surprisingly tenacious group, and I discovered them about five years later when they were giving out freebies of a later studio and live album (In Our Gun and Out West, respectively).

Liquid Skin falls in the middle of all of this, during the time when I wasn't thinking about the band. Therefore, it is very much a "fill in the gap" retrospective acquisition. It's their second album and it hit very quickly after the debut, creating almost a "staggered double-album" effect to the casual fan. I honestly don't pick up on many huge differences between them, particularly if the third album is considered, which does feature a number of departures from these albums.

This album also does a weird thing where the previous album's title track shows up here instead. Just for fun, I checked to see if there was a "Liquid Skin" on In Our Gun, but there wasn't, so it's not a running joke or anything. It's just a fluke, kind of like having multiple self-titled albums, or (even worse?) making your second album the self-titled album.

Nowadays, Gomez is up to seven studio albums, with the last one released in 2011. According to everything I've seen the band is still around (with the same rock-solid, no drama lineup), but quite some time has elapsed since their last release. The official website has been quiet for nearly a year, but if the most "recent" news is any indication, this unofficial hiatus is probably likely due to the budding solo careers of Ian Ball and Ben "not Mayer" Ottewell, both of which upon light inspection cut fairly close to the Gomez sound.