There’s been a lot of hype about Gomez. But still more hype about the hype, which is ridiculous. Especially when the band’s own concentration is entirely focused on the music, on what they’re doing right now, rather than worrying about whether they’ll be the ‘next big thing’ or when the obligatory critical back-lash will come (in fact, it already has).

They’re musicians, not aspiring celebrities, although seeing the three vocalists performing ‘78 Stone Wobble’ live there is both energy and charisma, charged by their interaction and total belief in what they’re doing. Having been highly publicised under the banner of singer Ben’s voice, ‘78 Stone Wobble’, with minimal Otterwell vocals, seemed a surprising first single. “It might not be representative of this album, but maybe it’ll be more representative of the next album”, Tom [Gray, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist] defends. “It’s a good song and it sounds like a single, so we put it out, it was really as simple as that. I think we would have had more of a nightmare if we’d actually thought about it and tried to work out which song was gonna be the one which could be defining as the Gomez sound, which I don’t think there is.” There are, of course, the rather pathetic doubts over young white boys writing songs such as ‘Tijuana Lady’. “That puzzles me, when people say how come they’re not forty year-old Californians? Only a young white boy would write ‘Tijuana Lady’, as you well know. No one else would have the gall to do that. Forty year-old Californians wouldn’t have sung about silky ponchos...I think they’re jumping through hoops to stuff it in a corner and go, ah, that’s what that is. I think that happens to all bands, they have to fit you in somewhere.”

Accordingly, Gomez have experienced their fair share of the never-ending curse of comparison so popular amongst nineties’ journalists, with several obviously aurally-impaired writers placing them between the retro bum-cheeks of Ocean Colour Scene and Kula Shaker. “Oh God Almighty”, seems a very appropriate response from Tom. “The difference is we’re using our influences to make something new, not in order to sound like them. ’Cause, you know, who hasn’t fucking heard Led Zeppelin? Who hasn’t fucking heard the Beatles? Goldie is probably as influenced by the Beatles as anybody else is, it just happens that he doesn’t end up sounding like them...It’s really confusing. Every time it gets said to me I kind of clam up. The themes are there which associate us with old music, but when I put the Radiohead album on I don’t hear Pink Floyd - I can see it, but I don’t hear it. And when I put on our album I don’t think we sound like we’re trying to be someone else. I’m not a mod, I’m not a rocker, I don’t give a shit about what happened in the 1970s and the 60s, I want to carry on with what I’m doing. It’s not like it’s some kind of horrible reminiscence on the way music used to be, it’s not about that, it’s about what music can be.”

So where exactly do they fit in the musical scheme of things? Gomez don’t slot easily into any given category, even struggling themselves to pin-point the influences they draw on. “It’s a multitude of bits from different places, assorted things from everywhere and anywhere. It’d be a supergroup of about fifty people... I mean, there’s some spurious comparisons with people like Tom Waits and Beck and stuff, but none of them really stick if you listen to the album.” The album does, however, reveal an obvious blues influence. “It definitely uses the blues a lot, but it uses country and jazz and what have you as well. It’d be nice to just sit here and say, yeah, we’re a blues band, but I think we’re mainly a rock and roll band at the end of the day. I’m not really sure in what way...” There’s an admitted musical affinity with acts such as Beck, Ben Harper (they’re planning a jam with him in America) and the Black Crowes, which springs less from musical similarities than from a common outlook. “I think it has more to do with the culture of what we’re trying to do than the specifics of it. We’ve got fifty, sixty years of popular music behind us and we can use them as our palette. I don’t care where it comes from, whether it’s yesterday or from ’33. If you’re adventurous with what you’re doing, if you’re an artist, you’re gonna try and make the medium as big as possible so you can constantly find something to create with.” Surely you must feel you share this view with some current British acts as well? “Maybe bands like Radiohead and Blur. But we’re located slightly differently - somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic I think - listening to mainly American music, and then putting some British into it. Most of us feel an affinity with anyone who’s trying to make interesting music. It’s all about SOUND, you can do anything you want with sound. I have an affinity with any musician who’s gonna play something that will constantly challenge, anyone not living up to the boring cliché of what is supposed to be normal now.”

On stage, they succeed in showing a reverence for sound and an avoidance of cliché, overcoming with charm the technical difficulties which beset them. The inter-play is fantastic, with five unusually talented musicians combining to make Gomez more than the sum of their parts, and reflecting their creative process. “We’ve all done compositions. Obviously in the band certain individuals write more of the ‘songs’, the one guitar line and the one melody, but to say that it was written by just that person when you’re a band is wrong.” So you all consistently contribute? “Yeah, always write, don’t ever stop writing. I wouldn’t understand being in this game if it wasn’t about creativity. If I was going months and months without having written anything then I’d consider leaving, leaving the whole thing.” Thankfully, with a large amount of written material still unrecorded, and fifteen to twenty songs in development, it is unlikely that Gomez will be faced with this dilemma. Such a bemused attitude to success, an unfailing ability to place the music firmly in the foreground and a willingness to experiment and diversify is what makes Gomez such a revolutionary revelation, and one of the brightest hopes we’ve got.

Gomez were talking to Jane, in June 1998.