Amazon.co.uk Review
You have to feel a little bit sorry for blues-loving, Mercury-Prize-winning indie Brit-rockers Gomez. Following the gargantuan success of their debut LP
Bring It On in 1998, they've consistently failed to recapture the same levels of hype and adoration, despite producing several albums' worth of innovative, charming and genuinely atmospheric songs. Whether works like
Liquid Skin,
In Our Gun and
Split the Difference are weaker than
Bring It On, or whether they simply didn't get enough promotional oomph, is a debate fans and critics will enjoy for years to come. But
Five Men in a Hut - a collection of the band's best singles, flipsides and unreleased tracks from their Virgin/Hut period provides apologists with arguments aplenty. Not only is the anthology laboriously comprehensive (36 tracks, including their first single "78 Stone Wobble", career highlights "Whipping Piccadilly" and "Get Myself Arrested" plus unreleased tracks "Old China" and "Diskoloadout") - it's also surprisingly listenable. While only an obsessive would sit through both CDs in one go this is a quintet whose languorous leanings can be narcoleptic, after all - there's just enough magic on each disc to redeem their reputation as enigmatic troubadours par excellence.
--Paul Sullivan
CD Description
'Five Men In A Hut' is a retrospective album that looks back over the career of Mercury Prize-winning indie-blues band,Gomez. Fusing the eclecticism of Beck with traditional indie and blues elements, they have enjoyed great success both in the UK and the US with their distinctive, laid back brand of slacker-rock. For the uninitiated, this is the perfect introduction to the band's back catalogue. Includes the tracks'Whippin' Picadilly' and 'Ping One Down'.