Classic Albums: Supergrass - I Should Coco

Author: Dollyrocker

'I'm not really entirely sure what would fill the criteria for 'classic album' as such. Many polls seem to focus on sales, or how much a particular album may have influenced a generation or whether a particular album was written in x key of melancholy from some tortured soul or other, but the classic albums you tend to find in top ten polls tend to lack one key ingredient. Fun.

Cue Supergrass, a band who burst onto the indie scene straight out of Oxford in 1994, a town previously famed for such illuminaires as Ride and Radiohead. The three members were pretty young at the time, Gaz Coombes the bands frontman and main songwriter being just 18. Danny Goffey the drummer just behind at 19, and Mickey Quinn being the wise old man at 24. A single called 'Caught By The Fuzz' came out in late '94, and people began to take notice. Essentially a punk / pop / thrash song about being nicked for smoking dope, it was about as far away as you could get from Dad Rock as you could get without nicking his car.

So lets fast forward to the album then, that's really the purpose of this review, to try and make your spring as mine was 12 years ago, thanks to this record. May 1995 was the release date, and I remember going into HMV the morning of release cos I had heard that the early pressings of the LP came with a limited 7" of a Hendrix cover - Stonefree. I asked the guy behind the till if the LP had been selling well so far, and I remember him going; 'Oh yeh, flying out the door' really sarcastically. Odd, as it went to number 1 that weekend. Obviously hadn't reached Maidstone then.

Right, music. Opener 'I'd Like To Know' pretty much sets the pace for most of Side One, with a youthful 'one, two, one two three four' before Danny's huge drum roll bring the tune crashing in. It's cute looking back now at how innocently simple Gaz's lyrics were.. "I like to wake up on a Saturday, say 'Hello you' - A cup of coffee and I smoke a cigaretta or two". At the time as well, the chord changes and melody were pretty out there, as well as each of the band members being just amazing at their instruments, in the same way that say Bloc Party are, but just on a totally happy trip rather than a despairing one. 'Mansize Rooster' was a track that a lot of people knew, kicking off famously with a drum beat stolen point blank from 'House Of Fun' by Madness, the song then takes a life of it's own and causing mass pogoing in indie clubs from here to god knows where. 'Alright' had already been hyped up by Gaz earlier in the year as a country meets disco song, which made absolutely no sense at all until you heard it. This was then released in July as the summers PROPER feelgood hit of the summer, I think that most of the cool kids were too blown away by this to even notice Blur vs Oasis..

Side two eases off a little bit with tracks like 'She's So Loose' which shows the bands influence by bands like Hendrix and Led Zep, but the difference with Supergrass though, was that they, whether they meant to or not, added such a unique take on their influences that the sound totally became their own. Gaz decides it would be funny to speed up the track 'We're Not Supposed To' to make it sound like they were singing on helium, and 'Time' and 'Sofa Of My Lethargy' are just beautiful, and would show the direction Supergrass were already planning on going in later in their musical career. The album closes with 'Time To Go', a kind of fitting end to a perfect album.

If you have forgotten how good this album is, go and re-visit it. If you have never heard it, risk the fiver. If you like the current wave of bands like Kaisers, Arctic Monkeys etc, go and listen to the original young fresh punk pop band and tell me you don't love that, as Dizzee Rascal would say...