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Gomez
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Since its release last May, Gomez's album "How We Operate" has consistently garnered critical and commercial acclaim with Entertainment Weekly, Billboard and NPR calling the album the band's finest. "How We Operate" was hailed as "The Best Rock Album of the Year" by The Wall Street Journal.

The title track off of "How We Operate" quickly became a staple track for the hit ABC series "Grey's Anatomy," where it was prominently featured in the season finale and show promos. In addition, the band celebrated their first #1 single on the AAA airplay charts with their current single "See the World," which remained in the top slot for 5 weeks.

This year alone, Gomez has been featured twice on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno performing both the title track as well as "See The World" and have also performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Last Call with Carson Daly.

Solidifying their reputation for transcendent live performances, Gomez has sold out each leg of their 2006 and 2007 headlining tours, which included dates with the Dave Matthews Band as well as an opening slot at Madison Square Garden. Gomez are gearing up for a summer tour including a run of dates with The Fray starting in July.

Gomez, who have been touring and making records for over a decade, seems to have just arrived. "As a creative partnership, and as friends, we had to regroup and make a career-defining record," says Tom Gray (vocals, guitar, keyboards). Longtime cohort Ben Ottewell (vocals, guitar) concurs. "The last album (Split the Difference) was pretty rocking, and reflected the live show a lot. With this one, we wanted to focus on songs, melodies and words, rather than volume."

The band also features Ian Ball (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Paul Blackburn (bass, guitar), and Olly Peacock (drums). The quintet may have been playing together for a decade but their friendships date back even further. Ian and Olly have been friends since they were still in short pants, while the rest of the lads entered the picture as the duo progressed through academia. Drawing on their disparate tastes, which ranged from Nirvana to Woody Guthrie, Motown singles to barbershop quartets, Gomez honed a one-of-a-kind sound that incorporated all their influences around a shared point of reference: A deep, abiding love for creative music.

After releasing their debut single, "78 Stone Wobble" in spring of 1998, Gomez soon attracted international attention when they won the Mercury Music Prize for their debut full-length, Bring It On, which SPIN anointed "a damn beautiful album." It was followed by Liquid Skin (1999), and the rarities-and-B-sides compilation Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline (2000), and In Our Gun (2002).

2004 brought album number five, Split The Difference, hailed by the BBC as "one of the finest releases of the year." But soon after, Gomez literally split-- from their longtime label, Virgin Records. In 2005 Gomez inked a new deal with Dave Matthews' ATO Records, who issued the band's first live album, Out West.

The label switch has greatly benefited the band. "It's been a breath of fresh air, after the deeply ridiculous world of today's corporate record industry, where the tax year dictates creative output," says Gray.

To better focus their creative energies for their first studio release for ATO, Gomez enlisted their first outside producer, Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters). From their first meeting, the band felt confident they had made the right choice.

"The main thing with this record was to get everybody together in one room, working on all the songs together, and making sure there was a real unified vision," Gray confirms.

"On our old records, certain elements were carefully thought out, but a lot of things were simply done in the spur of the moment," explains Ottewell. "On this one, we didn't lose that spontaneity, but we thought things through a bit more. Ever since our second record, we've been involved in a long process of trying to tease out the best bits of what we do, and not clutter things up. Gil helped show us the way."

"The principle was to keep the whole recording very simple," says Ball of the manner in which the album's twelve tracks were written, rehearsed, and laid down. "If everyone didn't agree on a potential song, it was promptly withdrawn from consideration. Time and money were limited, which was good, because in the past we have occasionally tended to, shall we say, go to town."
At the same time, Norton recognized that he was overseeing a band with multiple songwriters that in essence, had grown up together. "Everyone had to be represented on this record," concurs Gray. "We needed to get the balance right again. Gil isn't at all conservative. He just loves a good song, done well, and he doesn't think that adding too much coloration actually helps bring a song to life."

"There's always been a certain ragged glory to Gomez," Grey concluded.

How We Operate retains and revitalizes that glory and presents it in a more immediately gripping form. "This is certainly the most cohesive record we've made," observes Ball. "And yet it remains stylistically genre-less-- which is to say, it's still brilliantly, unabashedly, Gomez."
Alberta Cross
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Alberta Cross
Broken Side of Time

More than clever verses and catchy choruses, truly timeless albums offer listeners the keys to another world; they catapult you into another frame of mind and jostle your soul a little bit along the way. Broken Side of Time, Alberta Cross’ ATO Records debut, is one of those albums.

A cathartic, kaleidoscope of influences, from Depeche Mode to The Band, it’s also the sound of Alberta Cross’ two principals—frontman/guitarist-vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee and bassist Terry Wolfers—going for broke and stumbling across the sound of their dreams in the process.

Broken Side of Time took root in an April 2008 jam session, Stakee and Wolfers’ first with three players they would quickly enlist—guitarist Sam Kearney, drummer Austin Beede and keyboardist Alec Higgins. With the aid of a little drink and a little smoke, the five jammed on a group of Stakee’s then-new songs, giving birth to Alberta Cross’ second incarnation almost immediately: “I remember thinking that night, ‘This is gonna be insane,’” remembers Stakee.

It was a time of upheaval for Stakee and Wolfers, ex-pat Brits living in Brooklyn. They had moved to a new, tough city, lost the major-label record deal they had moved there with, and were in the midst of reinventing both their band and their sound, while sleeping on friends’ couches. Their well-received debut EP, 2007’s The Thief & the Heartbreaker, was a modest, folk-minded, acoustic-based disc that garnered glowing reviews. But, for Stakee and Wolfers, it was a baby step.

Broken Side of Time, meanwhile, is a giant stride ahead, one that marks the band’s official introduction to America. Grand in volume and vast in vision, it’s an inspired set of electric songs that finds the intersection of The Verve, My Morning Jacket and Neil Young (with or without Crazy Horse). Recorded in Austin, produced by the band with Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Dead Confederate, Heartless Bastards) and mixed by John O’Mahony (Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Kasabian) at Electric Lady Studios, the album melds propulsive, throbbing bass lines and crashing waves of guitar to a haunting, impassioned voice that can sound ancient and Appalachian.

Something of an about-face from The Thief & the Heartbreaker, the album, says Stakee, bears the influence of years of frustration logged in the shadow of Manhattan: “It’s kind of a desperation album, a darker album; it’s definitely angrier. We’ve been in a crazy place during the whole album, and you can hear that.” Appropriately, Stakee was listening to Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and the grimmer, gospel songs of Depeche Mode while writing the songs of Broken Side of Time. On songs like “Rise From the Shadows” and “Ghost of City Life” he speaks directly of their situation and surroundings.

Despite any struggles, Wolfers and Stakee in many ways have had a charmed career thus far. Born in Sweden—where he spent a childhood on tour and in studios with his musician father before moving to London in his late teens—Stakee and Wolfers—a Brit charmed by everyone from Prince and My Bloody Valentine to Metallica and Ride as a teen—were playing in a guitar-rock band in London’s east end some four years ago, when Stakee brought some new songs and ideas to the band. When all were roundly rejected, Wolfers invited his bandmate to record those humble, acoustic songs on the makeshift equipment in his apartment.

“Right then and there I instantly realized that he was an extremely talented fellow,” Wolfers says. “That’s when I realized I had found someone who I could create some really great music with—after just jamming on a few things.” Those demos would become The Thief & The Heartbreaker—featuring Petter’s brother, John Alexander Ericson, on keyboards—released via Fiction in the U.K. and re-released by popular demand on the bands new U.K. label, Ark Recordings

Bored with the scene in London and in need of a burst of energy, Stakee and Wolfers moved to New York, where they immediately created a buzz, playing spellbinding acoustic shows at venues like The Living Room, en route to capturing a new deal with ATO Records. Seeking to create more of a band vibe—“and we wanted it to be a family,” says Wolfers—they added Beede, Higgins and Kearney and a louder, grittier sound was born. “We had a show at The Mercury Lounge [in New York] like two days after that first jam,” says Wolfers, “and, without really any real time to rehearse, I remember being onstage that night thinking, ‘This is the best I’ve heard the material.’”

Alberta Cross has toured extensively through the U.K., sharing the stage with Oasis, The Shins, Bat for Lashes and Simian Mobile Disco, among others. “If we weren’t playing for people every night, we would be going mad.” Stakee says. Adds Wolfers, “We do it, because we have to.”

“I remember going to see The Verve on the Storm in Heaven tour, and I stood right in front of [guitarist] Nick McCabe the whole night,” the bassist continues. “I remember walking out of that show feeling like I had just seen a group of people pour their heart and soul out, and I felt it. It changed my life. And that’s what we want to do: We want to give people something honest, and move them, make them feel.”

Echoes Stakee, “We’re trying to give people truly soulful music, which is hopefully inspirational. I want to ease their minds and give them a little break from reality.”
For more information please contact
Jaime Rosenberg, Brendan Gillen or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000, jaime.rosenberg@sacksco.com, brendan.gillen@sacksco.com or carla@sacksco.com or Ambrosia Healy at ATO Records, 310.273.2266, ambrosia@atorecords.com.
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