The following terms are used by various critics to describe Gomez's music in the band's press kit: "pop/rock," "fuzz 'n' swing," "bluesy," "rootsy," "country-tinged," "psychedelic," "indie pop," "Americana-rock," "postpunk," "alt-rock" and "stoner-folk space-blues." Not only are these in reference to a single band, they're in reference to a single album, their fourth, Split the Difference. The British band is hard to categorize, to say the least, but guitarist and vocalist (he shares both duties with fellow members Tom Gray and Ben Ottewell) Ian Ball isn't worried about pinning their music down. "We just don't think about it," he says. "I don't think about music in any sense other than how I hear it. I just don't think about its cultural impact or whatever."
That carefree attitude and musical diversity have brought Gomez success and acclaim in their native England, although despite extensive touring they've yet to crack the mainstream in the U.S. Their 1998 debut, Bring it On, won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in the U.K., an award given to one album a year and chosen by a panel of the country's notoriously fickle music critics. Ball, however, who moved to Los Angeles two years ago (the rest of the band remains in England), is ready to move on from the British scene, where the press, as is their wont, has moved on, as well. "We're pretty much vilified in England," he says cheerfully. "Once you've done two albums in England, then you're pretty much a ripe target for personal, vicious abuse. So we don't really have any love in England anymore, so we thought we'd come over here."
For his part, Ball is embracing his newfound American-ness. "I definitely prefer living here to living in England," he says, standing outside the Getty Center in his new hometown, excited to take in some LA culture. Likewise, he doesn't even let me get to a single question before enthusing over his band's upcoming trip to Vegas. "It's going to be hilarious," he says. "I have no idea what kind of state we're going to end up in. I have a really bad feeling that we've got a day off there beforehand, which could end in all kinds of situations. I hear that it's very hard to maintain sanity and sobriety if you have a night off in Las Vegas."
Ball also has plenty to say about the upcoming American elections. "I can't vote, no, but I can tell everybody else to," he says. Gomez will be registering voters on their upcoming tour, and Ball is optimistic about the possibility for regime change in the U.S. "I don't know whether we're going to be making any political statements, because you don't really need to make any political statements at the moment. The idiots are doing it all for themselves. There's not really any need to say that anymore. It's just hope that they don't cheat in Florida, and then everything will be cool."
One might wonder if Ball is a little naïve about American elections, but he has an upbeat attitude about nearly everything we talk about. He jokes about the band's waning popularity in England ("Really, what we should do in England is say that we've split up, and then in six months we'll have a reunion tour and they'll all go, 'Oh, God, they were such a good band'"); their inclusion in the jam band community ("I like the hippies"); and the possibility of selling songs to commercials ("We're going to have to if we can't get money from anywhere else"). Speculating that the way for Gomez to conquer America would be to pin themselves down in one genre, Ball laughs about that, too. "Maybe the next record will be all the same song," he jokes, "brilliantly disguised as 12 different songs."