Why Gomez are afforded more credibility than fellow countrymen Bush X will always baffle me.

Both U.K. acts display an affinity for early '90s North American rock music that manifests itself in a sound so hackneyed that anyone who has heard their influences -- Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, et al. -- could be excused for a casual dismissal of either.

Yet, for some reason, Gomez have attained a hip invincibility that allows them, after only two albums, to release a collection of rarities and b-sides in the form of Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline.

If you're a fan of the quintet, no doubt you'll be salivating over these 15 songs -- including a version of the Beatles' Getting Better that will have you pining for the soulless 30-second Madison Ave. treatment -- that display their state of the Union Jack rootsy blooze rock, a kind of cross-cultural bastardization that could best be described as the Kinks with an Eddie Vedder complex.

But if you don't get Gomez, or the "pass go" card that critical acclaim has brought them, then you'll most definitely find nothing here to dissuade you from your free-from-Alive frame of mind.

Oh, he gets the lead out, alright, and sends it straight into your skull old-skool style.

Track Listing 01. Shitbag 9
  02.Bring Your Lovin' Back Here
  03.Emergency Surgery
  04.Hit On The Head
  05.Flavors
  06.78 Stone Shuffle
  07.We Haven't Turned Around (X-Ray)
  08.Buena Vista
  09.Shitbag
  10.Steve McCroski
  11.Wharf Me
  12.High On Liquid Skin
  13.Rosemary
  14.The Cowboy Song
  15.Getting Better