Tag Archives: supergrass

#1380: Supergrass – Time

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Ah, the last time I’ll be writing about a tune from I Should Coco on here. It’s been a good run. I’ve tried to be a champion of Supergrass whenever I cover something of theirs on this place, and I’m gonna keep on going. While you may be listening to Blur, or Pulp, or Oasis, you should all really be listening to Supergrass instead. I Should Coco usually gets recognised as the classic album of the band’s. It was released in the midst of Britpop and it has ‘Alright’ on there. But its overarching infectious energy, brilliant melodies and underlying humour has helped the record stand the test of time. When it comes to me, …Coco was the third Supergrass that I physically owned after getting it for my 13th birthday and having In It for the Money and the X-Ray album in my hands already. And I can remember that first listen and thinking at the time, “Yeah, this is just another good Supergrass album.” Those guys had done it again. And this was just their starting point. They only got better.

‘Time’ is the 11th song on …Coco. It was released alongside ‘Alright’ in a double A-side single format in 1995. The two songs got to number two in the charts, but ‘Alright’ got all the popularity. I don’t think I’d ever heard ‘Time’ before I got I Should Coco in 2008. At this point, I can’t remember the last time I willingly listened to ‘Alright’. ‘Time’, I could put on at anytime. It’s the band’s country, “Home on the Range” type song, anchored by a delightful guitar lick and a swinging rhythm. Got a big appreciation for the groove it possesses, punctuated by the bass line by Mick Quinn. There aren’t many words to analyse in this song. It leaves a lot to interpretation. What I’ve felt is it’s about a person acknowledging that it’s time to leave their loved one as they go away for a little while. If it’s based on personal experience, someone’s going on tour. But the narrator wants to know that the love they still have never leaves when they look their partner in the eyes: “I know what I see / Have it all, you” as it says in the chorus. It doesn’t sound right on paper, but the feeling’s there. Sounds much better with the music alongside the words.

I think what also makes the track so great is the way Gaz Coombes the thing. “The tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime’s on the way”. It’s those long-drawn out notes that ring out into the studio. Such an emphatic way to get things rolling. In fact, the vocals all the way through are probably my main highlight. Particularly how Quinn mirrors Coombes’s melody, but an octave higher. Adds that little layer on top of everything. So when they sing together during the choruses, it makes the song all the more catchy than how it initially started off. Cap it off with a simultaneous guitar and harmonica solo, you get some good listening returns. Coming after what’s probably the silliest song on …Coco, ‘Time’ lays down a real sense of warmth and endearing sincerity, providing a moment to “feel” as the album gets closer towards its end. Yeah, I’m a big fan of this one. It’s not the final statement on the album. But as a representative of it on this blog, it is. Couldn’t be more appropriate.

#1311: Supergrass – Sun Hits the Sky

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“I know a place where the suuun hits the skkyyy!” A great, great opening line to a song, the song in question being Supergrass’s ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ from their second album, In It for the Money, released in 1997. I’ve made it known in many a post before that this is my favourite Supergrass album, and I want to stress again that while you all may get your Britpop fill from Oasis or Blur, Pulp or Suede, all very respectable choices, please, please don’t leave Supergrass out in the cold. You should all be listening to Supergrass. Not one dud exists in the band’s six-album discography. I’m sad that it’s more or less confirmed that they won’t make another one, even though they are kind of together at the moment to celebrate the 30th anniversary. In another way, sometimes it’s best to just let things be. I can understand that. So I’ll leave it at that too.

Anyway, ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ is the sixth song on In It for the Money, closing out the album’s first half if you were to listen to it on vinyl. I have a strong, strong feeling that I heard the song in an advert for a UK holiday resort of some kind. Maybe Butlin’s. Maybe Center Parcs. If any member of Supergrass happens to read this, could you possibly confirm whether this was the case? I would have been a small child when those “commercials” were going around. But come 2005/06 when I was a little older, and by that, I’m talking the age of 10, Supergrass videos were usually playing on the television – a whole lot of fun they’d be too – and the video for ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ showed up one day on one of those video channels. The song was immediately recognisable, but the main thing I got was that it was Supergrass who had made the song – I want to say I had gained a fair knowledge of the band by then – and that this thing called In It for the Money was something to get, because song that was shown on the TV from it was I enjoyed a heck of a lot.

So where is this place where the sun hits the sky? Well, we all know that the sky isn’t this kind of border that the sun reaches up to. It’s all really limitless. I know it’s not meant to be taken literally. In fact, I think this track is about wanting to get really, really high – more in a haze of marijuana smoke rather than a darker deal with heroin – a bit like Paul McCartney’s ode to pot with ‘Got to Get You into My Life’. When you’re in your 20s and in a band, you’re gonna be smoking joints at some point. Gaz Coombes about knowing a place where the sun hits the sky and things get all distorted and strange, and in the choruses he sings about being someone’s doctor and being on the way to prevent someone from coming down. I guess like how it’s a dealer’s job to deliver the goods to their clients. I think I’ve got this song down. Just can’t help but feel good when listening to this one, got such a driving momentum. Very, very hard not to sing along to once you’ve got the words down, and notable highlights are the keyboard solo by Rob Coombes and the psychedelic ending where tablas and bongos enter the mix and the song eventually fades out with Mick Quinn laying down some licks on the bass guitar. A big “Yes” from me for this tune.

#1266: Supergrass – St. Petersburg

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Years ago, when I was properly getting into Supergrass – I’ll say I was about 12 – I asked one of my cousins if she was into the band. This was a cousin who got me into football and who I knew kind of listened to the same music as I did, so it was worth the shot. She told me that she did like them and that she remembered watching a video where they were dressed in white suits, but she couldn’t remember the song’s name. All the videos I’d seen of Supergrass on MTV2 or whatever channel up to that point had no resemblance to what she was talking about. So we were both at a loss for words and we moved onto another subject. I can’t remember exactly when or where, but there was a time when I eventually found the song’s video online and thought, “Oh, so this is the song that [my cousin’s name] was talking about.” Gaz Coombes was in that white suit. The song’s name was ‘St. Petersburg’.

The track was chosen to be the first single from the band’s fifth album, Road to Rouen, and was released a week before the record’s arrival. Rouen was the product of a sombre time in the Supergrass camp, as the mother of guitarist Gaz Coombes and keyboardist Rob Coombes had passed away and drummer Danny Goffey was getting unwanted attention in the tabloids. The music became less upbeat, more acoustic and serious. Almost artsy in a way and jam-oriented in places. It’s not an album I return to all that much. There’s something about a sad Supergrass that bums me out even more, because I associate them with having good times and upbeat, melodic tunes to bust out at the top of my lungs. A sad Supergrass is an oxymoron to me. ‘Coffee in the Pot’ lightens things up, which I appreciate. The LP may not be for me, but it’s still very much essential and an integral part of the band’s catalogue. So don’t let me turn you off listening.

So, right, yes, the song, ‘St. Petersburg’. If there was going to be a single chosen to represent the album first, it was always going to be this one. Despite all the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph, once you get into its swinging tempo, you can’t help but listen to where the song leads to. The track details the feelings of a narrator who’s simply tired of the monotonous, tedious, meaningless life they’re living and feels they have so much to give. They make an aim to move to the titular city to make things happen. But the poignancy in the fact that whether the narrator follows through with this or if it’s simply just a wish that never comes to fruition is left answered. The fact that the narrator’s time of leaving is always ‘three days’ away and never decreases to ‘two’ or ‘one’ makes it more likely that it’s the latter situation. But more generally, I fall for the song’s overall mood every time. One of those perfect songs for looking out the window of a train when it’s raining and you feel like the main subject in a music video. A very specific example. But don’t tell me you’ve never done the same thing.

#1243: Supergrass – Sometimes I Make You Sad

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In It for the Money is my favourite Supergrass album. I may have said that before in the posts for other songs from there. There’s no sort of concept you have to dig your brain into, or any kind of lyrical themes to take mind of. The record is just song after song of unforgettable bangers. Bangers with some slower tunes in between. …Money is grander in scale in comparison to I Should Coco, which was released a couple years prior, marked by a bigger production and a use of a wider variety of instrumentation, whilst still containing a lot of the playfulness and memorable melodies that endeared Supergrass to so many in the first place. Its final track, ‘Sometimes I Make You Sad’, is very playful and however stranger it may sound in comparison to the songs that come before it, it acts as the perfect way to bring the album to a close.

The track preceding ‘Sometimes…’ ends with this slow fade out of the band jamming. A few moments of silence arrive. Then ‘Sometimes…’ starts and you’re greeted with a gloomy Hammond organ and a beatbox loop performed by members of the band which apparently took a couple of hours to properly get down. The scary-circus ‘Benefit of Mr. Kite’ vibe the song has going for it wasn’t something I expected on that first time of listening, I tell you. But underneath the spooky atmosphere is a something of a motivational song, telling you to do what you like, go out into the world and explore. The ‘motivational’ part is somewhat negated though as the lyrics make sure to tell us that whatever you do, no one really cares all that much and there’s nothing out there that’s all that exciting anyway.

For the longest time, I assumed that bass guitarist Mick Quinn was the lead vocalist of the track. It obviously wasn’t Gaz Coombes, and Quinn does sometimes take the lead in a few Supergrass songs. But that assumption was laid to rest when, during a Twitter “album listening party” in the COVID times, Quinn mentioned that it was drummer Danny Goffey who sung the song, after a quick trip to the pub. So it turned out ‘Ghost of a Friend’ wasn’t the only Supergrass he was the lead on after all. The reason his voice is so high is because, and I’m guessing here, he recorded it while the track was playing at a slower speed, so when sped up it sounds like he ingested some helium before performing. That is the reason the guitar solo also sounds all spindly like it does. So why not apply the same technique for the voice? Thanks to the remastered deluxe edition that came out in ’21, I can now embed some moments that look into the making of the track. More specifically, the creation of the beatbox loop and Goffey’s guide vocal. Both comical in their own ways.

#1217: Supergrass – Sitting Up Straight

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Just over a month ago I was writing about a Supergrass song from I Should Coco, and now I find myself in the same situation. ‘Sitting Up Straight’ is another tune from the LP that I remember liking very much immediately. Coming right after preceding track ‘Strange Ones’, which alternates between upbeat, in-your-face pop rock for the choruses and bluesy-waltz timing for its verses, ‘Sitting Up Straight’ fixes the listener with the former all throughout its duration. It does start slowly to begin with, a loungy performance of what later makes itself known as the song’s chorus lulls you in, before things properly get underway after 20 seconds.

“Sitting up straight on the back of the bus / Mimicking time as evening turns to dusk” is the first lyric, it’s one that bass guitarist Mick Quinn admits to not knowing what it means. But it firmly places any listener in the scene. A narrator’s sitting at the back of a bus and listing the things they see and do. They make note of a boy with his “face on the floor” – a British saying, meaning he’s looking glum – before empathising with them in the joyous choruses where the guitars really come into life among some rapturous harmonies. That first chorus comes in with an entire different key to what the song initially set off with, begins in G before switching up to D I think, and remains in that until it all finishes.

I enjoy this one quite a bit actually. I see YouTube comments that read along the lines of “Yeah, the song’s good, but the chorus could be better”. Which… I can maybe kind of see. But I consider them to be the best part. As choruses usually are wont to be. But in general, the song’s very easy to get into. The previous track throws you in a few different directions. But with ‘Sitting Up’ you know where you stand. That is, at least, after 20 seconds of waiting. It’s like an “Enough of that, we know you want to hear more of this” kind of thing. That’s how I sort of see it. Plus, if you get the words down for the first verse and the chorus, no more work has to be done on your part because the second verse is the exact same. All in all, a fantastic punkish package of Britpop.