Supergrass - Britpop's fresh grass

What's left of the golden age of britpop, fifteen years on? Not a huge amount really, but not quite so little either. There are prominent figures who have launched solo careers with varying degrees of success, like Jarvis Cocker and Brett Anderson; others who flit frantically between various solo projects and impromptu reunions of the bands that made them famous, see Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon; others still who keep bickering among themselves and only hint at what their future might hold - we're obviously talking about the Gallagher brothers; there are bands that reunite fleetingly, like Marion and Dodgy, or more steadily, like Shed Seven, who keep playing and packing out live clubs across England, or James, who have even released an album that's anything but worthless; and finally, there are figures who surface only very sporadically, like Paul Draper, who every now and then writes a song for someone else, and maybe even plays on it too, but still doesn't grant Mansun fans their wish of finally hearing some new material of their own.

Then there are the bands that never broke up and are still alive and kicking right alongside us: some belong to the later phase of the movement, like Travis, Stereophonics and Embrace, while others were already established, or at least on the launch pad, during the glorious two-year span of 1994/95: we're talking about Super Furry Animals, who have lost their fizzy, innovative spirit but still release decent records, and Charlatans, who had to weather a couple of heavy missteps but with their latest effort "You Cross My Path" have once again climbed back above the threshold of decency. And then there's them, Supergrass, the only ones still oozing vitality and genuineness from every pore, still capable of putting out records that have little to envy from the glorious Nineties.

As often happens, the band's core had already formed an earlier project: in this case, singer and guitarist Gaz Coombes and drummer Danny Goffey, both from Oxford, initially played in Jennifers, who even managed to release a single on the prestigious Nude Records before splitting up. Gaz went to work in a restaurant, but evidently a different destiny awaited him: on the job, he met bassist Mick McQueen and invited him to play with him and his old drummer - and so Supergrass were soon born.

The trio's debut full-length is a real belter: released in 1995 and preceded by the infectious singles "Caught By The Fuzz" and "Mansize Rooster", I Should Coco is undoubtedly one of the finest existing examples of how great results can be achieved by exploiting the interplay between the purest, freshest, most genuine rock'n'roll and the noble side of pop - the kind capable of churning out songs that stick to anyone who hears them, not because of their banality but simply thanks to superior compositional inspiration.

It's not easy to describe the beauty of this record, because the elements that define it can be found in countless other works both earlier and contemporary to it: the gripping force of the melodies, the freshness of the sound, the clever use of backing vocals, the ability to alternate tracks built on tight, clearly punk-rooted guitar riffs with others whose sound is enriched by precise, well-placed keyboard touches, and still others that are more relaxed, both in tempo and in the vigour with which the instruments are played. Nothing innovative, then, in theory, but you only need to listen to this record once to immediately understand that, just as the reference points are recognisable, the presence of a strong stylistic personality is equally undeniable.

Gaz Coombes' distinctive half-falsetto delivery, his bandmates' ability to enrich the vocals with backing harmonies that come in effectively every time and are never predictable, the guitar sound that's often dirty yet never comes across as crowd-pleasing and still always conveys a sense of cleanliness and sunniness, the riffs and solos from that same guitar, linear yet never reproduced statically, the gentle swells and dips in sound intensity that always arrive at just the right moment, as well as the keyboard and acoustic guitar used sparingly but always to tremendously effective ends (just think of the insistent piano chord that opens the famous "Alright"); all strengths thanks to which the band's devotion to Buzzcocks and Kinks is simply a vehicle for expressing something spontaneously their own. And then there's the aforementioned brilliance of the melodies, astonishing from the first song to the last, enough to make any songwriter jealous, and a not-to-be-underestimated aspect concerning the structure of the tracks: in some of them the traditional rule applies, whereby the chorus is the melodically easier moment compared to the verse, while in others it's almost impossible to tell which melody belongs to which part of the song (think again of "Alright": which is the chorus - is it the moment when Coombes sings "We are young, we run green..." or "Are we like you? I can't be sure..."?), and this alternating structure further increases the album's level of variety.

The lyrics, of course, fully reflect the spirit of the music: they deal with eventful living, having fun, strange people, hangovers, basic needs, arguments, the desire to live somewhere better.

I Should Coco deservedly tops the UK sales charts, and also gets excellent reception across the rest of Europe: Supergrass barely have time to register that they've even entered the record market before they find themselves unable to escape the attention of fans and a good chunk of the media and the general public alike.

Who knows whether it was the weight of all this attention that pushed the band towards an equally melodic but less sunny and spontaneous style. The fact remains that when In It For The Money came out in 1997, it was immediately clear - even just from the fact that the cover and booklet are in decidedly darker tones than those of I Should Coco - that the lightness and disenchantment of the debut had already been set aside in favour of a fuller, more constructed sound, a less driving rhythm and less sprightly guitar lines. Fortunately the band manages to keep the flow between songs almost as smooth as before, and the melodic brilliance is only slightly below that of two years earlier, with the result that this too turns out to be a great record - ideal for ensuring that Supergrass wouldn't remain forever an overly youthful band but would instead manage to broaden the emotional range of their output without their newfound maturity overshadowing the trio's distinctive knack for blending rock and pop.

Some tracks mark less of a break from the past, like the big single "Sun Hits The Sky" or "Going Out", while others stand out quite distinctly from the older material thanks to the traits highlighted above, which, as noted, don't represent a betrayal of the band's nature but rather a coherent artistic evolution. On the rock & roll-leaning songs, such as "Richard II" or "Tonight", the heavier guitar and rhythm section sound give the impression of an angrier band - one that still clearly enjoys playing but wants to handle its instruments with a bit more bite; on the slower pieces, like "Late In The Day" or "It's Not Me", we hear on one hand a more elaborate approach to arrangements and backing vocals, and on the other a much more pronounced emotional component. There's also at least a third category of songs that sit somewhere between these two types: specifically "G-Song", "Cheapskate", "You Can See Me" and "Sometimes I Make You Sad". These show an even more meticulous approach to production choices than the ballads, and are also marked by greater rhythmic dynamism, with tempos no longer kept steady throughout the whole track.

The lyrics, overall, fit perfectly with the changes described above: the very first words on the record, found in the opening title track, are highly symbolic: "Here I see a time, to go, we'll leave it all behind. And you know it's wrong, to fall".

The album receives good, though not outstanding, reviews and sales compared to the debut, especially at home. It remains, however, a very fine and important work, both in the sense outlined above and in giving fans the certainty that Supergrass were not just another britpop flash in the pan, but a talented band built to last.

"Moving, just keep moving, well I don't know why to stay, no ties to bind me, no reasons to remain" sings Gaz Coombes on the opening track of Supergrass's self-titled third album, released in 1999. And indeed the band's evolution continues on this record too, as they come across as increasingly less youthful and more mature, once again, though, without betraying their pop/rock nature rooted in the great British songwriting tradition. Here, though, it's barely a case of Kinks and Buzzcocks anymore - a new and imposing influence enters the picture, one that the band will carry with them for nearly the rest of their career: the Rolling Stones. The Stones-ian imprint is unmistakable on a highly appealing single like "Pumping On Your Stereo" and surfaces whenever, within a given track, the band leans more towards dancing than contemplative moods. The album's strength, though, lies in its ability to feel just as tight, flowing and fresh as its predecessor, even as, alongside songs with a straightforward structure, we find others where the songwriting is considerably more intricate, with shifts in melody and mood along the lines described above.

The level of variety, moreover, is even more pronounced, and it's genuinely difficult to group similar songs together, since each one has its own distinct identity - not just in terms of structure, as mentioned, but also in the interplay between guitar and keyboard, the role of the rhythm section, the vocal phrasing, the mood. And despite all these differences, the songs don't feel disconnected from one another: the album still holds together with strong overall stylistic coherence, showing an enviable level of quality and a very strong personality, at a time when the imperative in English rock seemed to be sounding as much like Radiohead as possible.

Sales figures for the album remain very satisfying, even if there's still a slight dip compared to previous results. Critics, on the other hand, are increasingly enthusiastic, and by now Supergrass are regarded as among the finest UK pop-rock acts of the entire Nineties.

We have to wait until 2002 for the fourth album, titled Life On Other Planets. The record marks the first appearance of keyboardist Rob Coombes, Gaz's brother, as an official band member (on all previous albums he had contributed as an outside collaborator). Above all, this is the first point in their career where Supergrass add little to nothing to the stylistic blueprint laid down by their past work: once again there's a fairly strong T-Rex influence, but beyond that, everything found across these 12 new songs had already been explored by the band before. Another factor that makes this record, if not inferior to its predecessors, certainly less compelling, is the marked linearity of its compositional structures, probably never so closely aligned with the classic song form.

Looking at the glass half empty, one could read Life On Other Planets as a sign of creative stagnation setting in; looking at it half full, one could argue the band rightly chose to take stock of where they stood, leaning more on their established strengths than chasing further evolution at all costs - a choice that would, in any case, be entirely natural after five years of intense creative ferment and success that, alongside the satisfaction, may well have brought on a touch of vertigo.

Despite the caveats mentioned above, the album is still well worth a listen, because the lack of any notable novelty is offset by the consistency of the melodic inspiration, the tightness of the sound, and the ability to let more driving songs coexist with others that are more measured in rhythm and intensity. In short, a cohesive album where every single track, without exception, contributes to the overall success, with no filler to be found once again (and not everyone manages to reach a fourth album without a single mere filler in their catalogue). A single like "Grace" is undoubtedly one of the first songs that comes to mind when thinking back on the band's career, and none of the other tracks pale next to this little gem. Partly for this reason, sales figures, despite another slight dip, remain solid, and the album too lands in the UK top 10.

2004 brings the classic celebratory compilation: in this case the "excuse" is 10 years of activity, hence the title Supergrass is 10. It brings together all the singles released so far plus two new songs. Usually, when a compilation of this kind chooses to include only the singles, it ends up only partially representing the band's body of work, but that's not the case here, because, fortunately, this set of songs covers very well everything the band put forward in its first decade of activity. Supergrass is 10 is therefore another solid effort, and one that's sure to remain a fixture in the car stereos of countless British pop-rock fans.

2005 is the year British indie-rock enjoys a wave of vitality thanks to the arrival of new bands who quickly take off across Europe. Among the debuts released that very year, like those of Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party and Maximo Park, and others released the previous year, such as Razorlight, Kasabian or Futureheads, a renewed appetite for various aspects of Nineties production is palpable. It would be the perfect breeding ground for Supergrass to reclaim the popularity they had ten years earlier, but it's precisely here that the band makes the move nobody expects, releasing an album that marks a profound stylistic shift for the quartet. Almost as if Life On Other Planets had never existed, Road To Rouen feels like a continuation of the evolutionary path that had taken clear shape with Supergrass. The band's pop sound is in fact even more refined than on the album six years earlier, and above all loses much of its rock component, in favour of even more varied song structures and a softer, rounder sound, in which piano, strings and even acoustic guitars play a distinctly prominent role. It was said that the album came about this way because of the difficult personal circumstances almost all the band members were going through at the time, starting with the Coombes brothers, who had lost their mother.

The strength of each song's individual identity is even more pronounced here, so alongside short, straightforward songs we find others, like "Tales Of Endurance" and "Roxy", that run past five and a half minutes and feel almost like collages stitched together from several different song fragments. Even when the structure is simpler, there's always a certain distinctiveness between the various tracks, thanks to arrangements in which the interplay between the aforementioned instruments is always different, giving each song its own particular mood, with the rock element mentioned earlier occasionally peeking through, though it truly comes to the fore only on "Kick In The Teeth". Beyond that, the album ranges from the enveloping softness of "St. Petersburg", an exceptionally refined single, to the playful diversion of "Coffe In The Pot", the driving momentum of "Sad Girl" and the title track, and the ethereal atmosphere of "Fin".

It's never easy to assess an album like this one, because on one hand it's only natural to feel puzzled by a choice that looks a lot like a betrayal of identity, but on the other one can only admire the courage of a band that, instead of seizing the ideal moment to cash in on its past, chooses to let itself be carried along by its feelings in the moment, putting on such a radically different guise. Faced, however, with a melodic inspiration that shows no sign of waning after all these years, and a sound that remains perfectly balanced throughout, one can't help but come away satisfied.

Road To Rouen once again lands in the UK sales top 10 and receives glowing reviews. It inevitably raises the question of whether the band will choose to carry on in the direction taken with this latest work, or whether, once the personal hardships have passed, they'll feel the need to reclaim their more familiar style.

The answer takes three years to arrive, and when Diamond Hoo Ha comes out in 2008, the message is as clear in substance as it is divisive in its reception. Starting with the cover art, the album is clearly a return to the style that made the band's name, with any ambition of definitively breaking away from it set aside for now. It would be too easy to dismiss this record with the same words used for Life On Other Planets, given that its strengths and drawbacks are very similar; what differs, though, is the way Supergrass arrive at this kind of outcome. On the album, in fact, we find a series of "firsts" that won't mark a substantial change but do show the band's desire not to come across as a faded copy of their former selves. For the first time, indeed, no song has a melody immediate enough to get stuck in your head from the very first listen and refuse to leave: this isn't to say the songwriting is convoluted, but that the catchiness that has always defined the band's output this time rests more on vocal phrasing and sound than on the melodies themselves. Continuing with the firsts, Gaz Coombes sings with the same verve as in the Nineties but with a fuller, rounder, more deliberately controlled tone, a level of care he had previously reserved only for the softer songs, letting his voice off the leash whenever the tempo picked up.

Continuing with the changes, the sound is different too, coming across as both tougher and more polished, with better-honed guitars and a rhythm section whose lines ring out with greater clarity. The keyboards, moreover, serve purely to reinforce the sound, whereas in the past they were more than once pushed to the forefront; still on the subject of arrangement choices, the sax makes its first appearance, never having been used before.

Inevitably, though, there can be some reservations in the overall assessment, since it's always hard to accept a step backwards, and compared to Life On Other Planets, this one carries two extra strikes against it: no longer being a novelty, and having arrived after the band's most obvious attempt at a leap forward, even though it should be said that leap stemmed from particular personal circumstances, and it's understandable that the band wanted to exorcise them by choosing not to continue down that road. Either way, the group once again manages to display its usual strengths, which by now would be redundant to list, with a style that recalls the most well-established traits of its catalogue without ever settling for sterile self-cloning.

For the first time the album misses the top 10 in Britain, even though critics keep praising it. In any case Diamond Hoo Ha is further proof of Supergrass's solidity, as the band remains light years ahead of every other britpop survivor in terms of inspiration and quality of output.

Shortly after the release of their latest full-length effort, the band's relationship with Parlophone, which had lasted since their debut, came to an end. In August 2009 the group signed to Cooking Vinyl, opting for an independent label instead of the major they had always worked with, and the seventh album, provisionally titled "Release The Drones", was due out in May 2010. Instead, in April 2010, the band announced its breakup, citing as the only cause "a 17-year itch". On one hand it's a shame we'll never know how Supergrass's career might have developed from there; on the other, there's the consolation of a band that called it quits while still at a good level, and so never had the chance to risk an artistic decline.

But pop history doesn't look kindly on the unemployed, under penalty of oblivion. And so in 2010, rather under the radar in truth, the Hot Rats project gets underway, helmed by Gaz alongside Goffey, with the fatherly collaboration of Nigel Godrich at the mixing desk, offering a selection of fun, though not all that simplistic, covers of glorious Anglo-American postcards. Behind the Zappa-esque name of the venture lies a boisterous in-joke that got out of hand and turned into an actual album, in an era when, quite evidently, releasing a record costs nobody anything anymore. The songs chosen for Turn Ons speak for themselves: from the Doors to Roxy Music, via the inevitable Elvis Costello, Kinks, Squeeze, Cure, Bowie or Velvet Underground; it's almost like flipping through the crooked tracklist scrawled in pen on a little mixtape painstakingly put together as a gift to oneself, tracing the densest, most meaningful branches of one's own rock family tree in the form of a homemade, DIY playlist. With modest means but passionate dedication, Coombes and Goffey replay and rebuild their personal rock cinematheque, piecing together scattered episodes and anecdotes in the most classic of memory exercises.

A pastime, an interlude before Gaz Coombes's solo debut, which saw the light of day in late spring 2012. Here Come The Bombs reinvigorates its protagonist's pop verve, confidently cantering across eleven tracks between classically British songcraft and the occasional experimental flourish. A record that convinces, and at times genuinely captivates. Amid the psycho-sixties guitars of "Hot Fruit" and the purely sixties guitars of "Whore" and "Simulator", one of Gaz's favourite personas emerges: the wild kid on a bike popping wheelies and pulling faces, never a nuisance but rather a delight. There's also room for oddball, rain-soaked ballads like "Sub Divider", which become a playground for unusual moves, almost a mini-suite with an almost frantic underlying rhythm and a slow, dragging pace, while all around it instruments, noises and different solutions pop up one by one as the speed builds.

A desire to take risks, to push things a little further without betraying the original idea of the pop song, is shown off with no small amount of tightrope-walking skill on "Universal Cinema", a gargantuan mix of recipes so opposed they end up fitting together perfectly, in a constant interplay of silences, noises, racket, din and buttoned lips. From one moment to the next you can go from the predictable, but thoroughly enjoyable, homage to the youthful era spent between Top Of The Pops and NME on "White Noise", to an unexpected homage to the recent hypnagogic current on "Fanfare", via an electronic portrait of an early-morning beach on "Daydream On A Street Corner", all the way to the lulling lullaby of "Sleeping Giant", presumably a tribute to the protagonist's rest. Which he'd certainly earned.

At the start of 2015 Coombes confirms his intention to keep going down the solo road with Matador, a second album that marks his (almost) definitive break from the britpop leanings of his origins – and, all things considered, from his entire fifteen-year stint in his famous band – in favour of the more outward-looking, at times even experimental, drifts of the present.

"Matador" is a mature and, in its own way, courageous arrival at broader stylistic shores, a sort of little encyclopedia of the old-and-new Coombes, caught between scattered self-referential leftovers and vigorous pushes toward as-yet-untried solutions, starting with a far more generous use of electronics at the expense of good old rock.

At the heart of the album – on which, among other things, he plays almost everything himself (Ride drummer Loz Colbert appears on four tracks) – melody and Gaz's splendid voice are still there, while what's often missing is the traditional song form: the album's masterpiece, "20/20", is a stripped-back ballad that builds gradually, steadily raising the dose of pathos. It's also telling that, on the fast-galloping "The English Ruse", the model is no longer British but rather, conversely, the lesson of Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs".

Britpop echoes resurface in a "The Girl Who Fell to Earth" that apes David Bowie, and in the inspired four-on-the-floor of "Detroit". The closing track is the midtempo "Matador", a minute and a half of nineties melancholy that cuts off abruptly after the first and only chorus.

Now fully freed from the revelry of a career as lucky as it was carefree alongside Supergrass, Coombes finds a second artistic life full of possibilities, and chooses to explore them all, producing an album that isn't always perfect but is certainly bold and intense.

Preceded a few months earlier by the retrospective The Strange Ones 1994-2008, at the end of 2020 the Oxford band comes back to life and documents the brief, exhilarating tour of their acclaimed reunion with Live On Other Planets, a live programme staged both to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their acclaimed debut album and, ironically, to mark ten years since the band's official breakup.

The band led by Gaz Coombes appears tight and on top form, as if the years spent on separate individual paths had never happened.

From the first note to the last in the setlist captured on this live document, the sound flows smoothly, leaving no room for any loss of energy or freshness.

The setlist spans the whole varied landscape produced by the English quartet over the course of an interesting and perhaps too underrated career, starting with the brashness and cocky swagger of their early days ("Alright", "Lenny", "Richard III") before transforming and evolving into far more complex territory ("Moving", "Mary") and at times experimental ground ("Fin"). A magnificent collection that documents and confirms the great depth and enviable form of one of the finest talents to emerge from the so-called British new wave.

At the end of the marathon reunion tour celebrating twenty-five years of Supergrass (who reunited for the occasion), right at the start of 2023 Gaz Coombes released his fourth solo album, titled Turn The Car Around.

Gaz built this new record over the course of the last seven years. It's an album steeped in feeling, tackling themes that capture the ups and downs of modern life - territory the talented English singer-songwriter has always handled with great skill, but which he probably manages to pin down with greater precision than in the past only across the nine tracks that make up this track list.

Stylistically, Coombes seems to lighten the arrangement scheme, less hemmed in by electronic superstructures and left free to display its more classic fragrances, with guitars and piano brought to the fore.

The opener "Overnight Trains" kicks things off in epic fashion, closely recalling the approach of the beloved Scott Walker. "Don't Say It's Over" shows off Coombes's considerable guitar skills, while "Feel Loop (Lizard Dream)" recalls early-2000s Radiohead, blending the shimmering notes of the versatile Oxford artist's six-string with lush electronic effects.

The glam rock of "Long Live The Strange" and the Bowie-esque ballad "Dance On" both carry clear echoes of Supergrass's golden (and underrated) back catalogue, while "Not The Only Things" (a heartfelt dedication to his autistic daughter) is driven by acoustic guitar and trip-hop elements, marking a visible departure from the sound of his previous albums.

One of the album's many strengths is the careful handling of the electronic inserts, more accessible than in his past work. The title track is a substantial example of this, a feel that shows its best side on the intense "Sonny The Strong", among the finest moments in the tracklist - well structured, never trite, and with that enviable dose of measured catchiness, written to recall the tormented life of British boxer Randolph Turpin, world champion in the years after World War II, who later died by suicide in 1966.

Less experimental than Matador and World's Strongest Man, Turn The Car Around is the tangible mark left by an artist confident in his own gifts and keen to distance himself from the sound many might expect from the former Supergrass frontman; it's the best possible showcase for his elegant skill as a guitarist and sound arranger, as well as his ever-growing versatility as one of today's leading singer-songwriters.

Contributions by Francesco Giordani ("Turn Ons"), Davide Sechi ("Here Come The Bombs"), Fabio Guastalla ("Matador") and Cristiano Orlando ("Live On Other Planets" and "Turn The Car Around")

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