FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Music by Aubrey McInnis GOB with Face to Face October 31 MacEwan Hall Ballroom What the heck happened to gob? Songwriters of hyperactive hits, gob’s trademark has always been speedy tempos to rival a teenager’s heartbeat on a first date (psst – that would be faster than fast, brothers and sisters). For their latest and greatest effort, The World According to gob, they decided to breathe in between catchy power chords, slow down and allow the listening public a chance to catch each supremely fun hook that has whizzed right on by in the past. "Basically we wanted to write good songs," explains Gabe, the friendly guy in charge of keeping a rock-steady pace behind the gob drum kit. "And we took our time doing it this time. We took four months off just to write." Renowned for speedy and melodic pop-punk – and a Juno nomination for 1999’s How Far Shallow Takes You – the fresh direction came as a pleasant surprise, even to some of the boys in the band. While gob was neck-deep in the process of composing demo songs for the album, Gabe sat down one night with singer/guitarist Tom and had a wee chat. Chuckling, Gabe looked at Tom quizzically after hearing about 20 to 30 song ideas for the album. " Have you written any fast songs, Tom?" he asked. " No, I haven’ t written any," replied Tom. "What’ s everyone gonna think about that ’cause it’s so different? I mean, it’s mostly mid-tempo numbers, well, for us anyways. I guess for George Michael, they’re all up-tempo, but for us they’re mid-tempo." I’ m guessing that this is the part where the two punk rock guys shared a laugh, embraced and realized that they had a killer little recording. They proceeded to record and mix down 14 solid tracks with Neill King that would make George Michael enthusiastically shake his fanny like he was in Beverly Hills again. Now, flash back to Gabe, on the phone from his home in Vancouver, filling me in on what thoughts were flying through the quartet’s minds during the rocked-up recording. "We just got sick of playing the same thing. We wanted to not be bored is the bottom line. We wanted to write songs that we’d be really happy to play live so that’s what we did." While gob went through all their demo songs and selected the best of the bunch to comprise The World According to gob, they painstakingly hammered out every detail. Not only are there countless peppy hooks and zesty guitar licks to discover during repeat plays, but the lyrics are substantial, mature and should keep listeners coming back for more. "We were all like, ‘Oh, yeah this fuckin’ song rocks!’ But then after you record it, you sit there and you mix it and then, y’know, it’s like, ‘Okay, is this song good?’ Like, I hope so. You kind of almost forget your initial response to it just being in the band, but the response we’re getting from everybody seems to be really good." Naturally. With one of the sauciest, Thriller-esque videos on rotation at MuchMusic – for the single "I Hear You Calling" – and an album that lives up to the hype generated by the commercial video, everything is perfectly in place to see the band and album take off. "Our record label and management were ecstatic and they said to us, ‘Okay, you boys did your job, now it’s time for us to do ours.’" Should be a walk in the park. If you don’ t mind running into a couple of zombie cheerleaders, request gob’ s spooky video for "I Hear You Calling" at www.muchmusic.com.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |