Release Date: May 2, 2006
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: ATO
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How We Operate is Gomez's first studio offering on the ATO imprint, and it's a (mostly) quiet stunner. Produced by Gil Norton and recorded in London, the album is a deft collection of well-molded pop songs that sound of a piece. They're full of ingenious little hooks, fine singing, poetics and to-the-point lyrics, and cool guitars. After popping this disc into the deck and hitting "play," it may be tempting to do a double-take at the cover for a moment, given the music the band has released in the past.
Sometimes things need to take a turn for the worse for a band to get back to what they're good at. After a decade spent honing their guise as geekish rockers with a scientific approach to the blues, Gomez have reacted to being dumped by their record company by rediscovering their sense of fun. Like their Mercury-nominated debut, Bring It On, How We Operate is a pop album that sounds as if the band have left the studio and gone outside for some fresh air.