(Translated from
my original Italian text by/ Tradotto da Nicholas Green)
Supergrass, hailing from Oxford, was the three-thousandth "next big thing" in Britpop during the 1990s.
Despite the usual parade of promotional singles
(Caught By The Fuzz, Man Size Rooster,
Lenny and Strange Ones), the group is slightly different from the norm because they have more of a punk edge, akin to the Buzzcocks.
On the best moments of I Should Coco (Parlophone, 1995), such as
Alright (which even made it into the U.S. Top 100) and She's So Loose,
their jovial abandon is far more palatable than the diligent calligraphy of their competitors, and Gareth "Gaz" Coombes has the exuberance of Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) at his best.
(Original text by Piero Scaruffi)
In It For The Money (Parlophone, 1997) is a decent follow-up, that
runs the gamut from glam (Late In The Day is basically a reworking of
Bowie's Velvet Goldmine) to hard-rock (Richard III). It includes
Going Out (perhaps their masterpiece) and
Sun Hits The Sky.
Supergrass (Parlophone, 1999) cannot avoid the Brit-pop syndrome.
Brit-poppers tend to evolve towards a more and more refined style and
eventually sink under the weight of their arrangements. The Supergrass
prove that the disease is contagious. Their teen spirit survives in a
syncopated soul-jazz number (Mary) and a mod-rock number
(Beautiful People), but capitulates to the
orchestral epos of Moving (that sounds very much like Roxy Music) and
to the Phil Spector-ish wall of sound of the country shuffle
Your Love.
Jesus Came From Outta Space, Pumping On Your Stereo and
Faraway are, de facto, tributes to three different stages
of Bowie's career.
Worse: too many of these (mainly) slow songs sound like
John Lennon's soporific ballads.
The new album is as much an encyclopedia of melody as the previous ones,
but the band has lost of the spontaneous, noisy, jovial approach that made
it different. As pop goes, the Supergrass now inhabit the adult, languid
land, as opposed to the jovial teenage land.
Life On Other Planets (Parlophone, 2002 - Island, 2003)
contains Za (the first of three inane songs that pay tribute to T.Rex,
the others being Seen The Light and Brecon Beacons),
and the singles Grace and Never Done Nothing Like That Before
(that recalls the Kinks).
All of their albums manage to be irritating by the time you finish them
(if you can make it to the end), but this one is built on the program of
irritating intelligent listeners.
The Best of 94-04 (Capitol, 2004) is an anthology of the hits.
Road to Rouen (Capitol, 2005) is another hodge-podge of styles
dressed up by all the possible cliches of pop arrangement, except that
this time the band exceeded all previous pretentiousness by stretching
songs with instrumental preludes and codas that borrowed from the history
of orchestral pop.
No song stands out on Diamond Hoo Ha (Capitol, 2008), the typical
embarrassment by middle-aged musicians who try to sound like they are still
teenagers. It's hard to believe that anyone would listen twice to
Diamond Hoo Ha Man
or
345 (to name the best of the bunch).
