Two years ago, Supergrass seemed like yesterday's men - but they're made of sterner stuff than the rest of the Britpop casualties. Now, after a sojourn in France, they're back with a belter of an album full of muscular pop, writes Tony Clayton Lea
It's all change for Supergrass in the fickle world of modern pop music. Two years ago, they were yesterday's men, a band born out of Britpop tossed on the rubbish tip. In their own words? "We blew it in terms of being a really smooth commercial act and cashing in."
Developing self-preservation mechanisms for dealing with the flak, they quickly became what they describe as "long-termists". These days, though, Supergrass needn't be worrying about cashing in, as the deserved success of their recently released album, Life On Other Planets, has given them a new lease of life. It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, either - of the entire Britpop crowd, Supergrass possessed an ear for a smart pop tune. No lugubrious Beatles retreads or art-pop for them, rather a naughty smack-on-the-head thwack of pure, muscular pop.
Frankly, Life On Other Planets is full of itself. Wired for sound and coming across as a belter of a guitar-pop record, it's consciously weird and slightly surreal in a sci-fi way. If the public had been losing interest - which they were, as sales figures traced a disappointing trajectory - then it has perked up again.
"I never really thought the public lost interest, to be honest," says a spunky Gareth "Gaz" Coombes. "I don't think we ever really live by that anyway. Whatever they think isn't exactly unimportant to us, but we tend to live by our own rules."
After Supergrass's previous album (the self-titled third, which hung around the Top 100 for 14 weeks, compared to 36 for the band's 1995 début, I Should Coco), things were quite different for the band.
"There was a lot more pop and dance music around, which might have affected us," offers Coombes as a possible explanation for the change of commercial climate. (Coombes's band mate, drummer Danny Goffey, has said that the band's hearts and heads just weren't into doing a proper job on Supergrass. Gaz disagrees. Let the bun fights commence.) Whatever the reasons, the band rode that hiccup quite well, possibly because they were made of sterner stuff than their Britpop fallout colleagues - whither Sleeper and Menswear now? - and probably because they didn't panic themselves into making foolhardy changes of direction for the sake of credibility or record sales.
Yet the perception of Supergrass was at one point that of wacky kids smoking weed (where exactly did you think the band name came from, anyway?), living together Monkees-style (they even had discussions with Steven Spielberg's "people" to set up their own television series), and making frisbee-throwing pop music. True?
"Well, yes, suppose so," Coombes mumbles. "But we're still here, doing our thing, aren't we? Life On Other Planets has been received really well, and the key to that was possibly not allowing the pop music climate get to you, believing in yourself and doing what you want to do.
"This album is what we wanted to do at this particular time - a cliché, I know, but true nonetheless. We're proud of all the albums we've made; they're pretty honest in many ways, and not influenced by what music might be happening around us." Part of the reason for the new album's strength lies in the fact that it was thought up in France over an 18-month period - traipsing through the southern part of the country, officially on a writing trip, unofficially on a very long holiday. Nice work if you can get it, eh?
"We'd just done a lot of touring, because although the third album peaked in Europe reasonably early, we were spending a lot of time in America, touring with Pearl Jam," says Coombes.
"That took up quite some time, needless to say, and we wanted to go somewhere after it to totally relax. We thought, why not France? It was really good, just doing some stuff on our own, relaxing, chilling out, and getting it together."
The band took a collective decision to enjoy themselves."The plan was to write the album there, definitely, so we took guitars and crates of wine, ate good food every night," says Coombes. "By the end of two months we only had about three songs and 20 mini-discs full of people rambling over crazy cinematic jams. Some of them were fantastic, but the album started to take shape when we returned home, when we subsequently came up with a selection of short, sharp pop songs."
Is it true you specifically wanted to make a record that consciously sounded ever so slightly sci-fi? "It came quite naturally to us," admits Coombes. "Yet I know we wanted to maintain focus and tightness amidst the slacking and the surreality. The third album was quite sprawling in a way, multi-layered and occasionally complex. On this one, we wanted to be more concise, with songs that spoke for themselves, and to even leave in the odd mistake, the occasional ragged moment, just to maintain the atmosphere. There are twists and turns on the record; it feels complete to me, from start to finish."
Coombes reckons that being outside London (he lives in Brighton) also tempered the results of the new album. "It's all about where you're head is at, and not living in London gives me that. As for so-called fame and rock stardom, I believe if we don't have a record out there's little reason for my photo to be in a newspaper."
Life On Other Planets is currently on release. Supergrass play Dublin's Ambassador on Friday (sold out).