One quality among many that defines Supergrass is their sense of humour. Note that the title track from their second and arguably best album, 1997’s In It for the Money, has been frequently chosen as set opener thus far on their no doubt lucrative re-formation tour. Though not tonight, as their 1994 debut single and power-chord crunching ode to teenage miscreance, Caught By the Fuzz, is instead selected to cheerfully signal the Oxford foursome’s surrender to the irresistible pull of the nostalgia vortex.
A reunion for the once handsomely mutton-chopped men who, while they may no longer be young or green do at least keep their teeth nice and clean, was perhaps inevitable. By the time Supergrass split in 2010 after 17 years, their 90s contemporaries Blur were already back at it and headlining festivals again, with Pulp soon to follow suit. No one could begrudge Supergrass a lap of honour, even if it will probably prove little more than that, with no plans for new music on the horizon – unsurprising considering that frontman Gaz Coombes’s solo career has gone from strength to strength (his 2015 album Matador was Mercury prize-nominated).
The set blasts off with the tracks Mary, Moving, Time and Mansize Rooster in the first third alone and rarely touches the ground for 90 minutes. A heavy skew towards the first half of Supergrass’s discography tells its own story: the band’s struggle to find more profound significance as the good times gradually ceased to roll. Yet it takes nothing away from the fact that they were one of the best British singles bands of their or any generation – songwriters steeped in the melodic, witty, wild and sweetly melancholic traditions of Buzzcocks, Madness, the Kinks and the Beatles before them (Supergrass’s I Should Coco was Parlophone’s best-selling album by a debut artist since Please Please Me).
The riff to Richard III makes the case for fedora-sporting Coombes being an under-heralded guitar hero, its flaming energy matched by drummer Danny Goffey’s madly flailing-limbed performance in the grand Keith Moon tradition, on top of a ludicrously high stage riser. It hardly matters that the singer fluffs the lyrics to Alright – the band’s piano-bashing radio staple was a quintessential Britpop anthem, even more than it was the quintessential Supergrass song. Rob Coombes’s synth solo on the tremendous Sun Hits the Sky invokes the merry psychedelia of early Pink Floyd. The bludgeoning off-kilter riff of Lenny begs the question as to how on earth the band ever got lumped in closer with Menswear than they did Mötorhead.
A bit of Marc Bolan-esque glam stomping is maybe the only link missing, but then Pumping on Your Stereo is chanted into life by the crowd. A song which, for all that its qualities lie surface deep, finds Supergrass still in possession of an uncommon gift: to rock with a joyousness that makes your face ache from smiling.
