By Todd Lavoie
Supergrass, “Diamond Hoo Ha Man”
Perhaps it’s perfectly fitting that the lads in Supergrass — cheeky as they’ve always been — are the ones in the much-ballyhooed Britpop pack having the last laugh after all. Chalk it up to their boyish exuberance, I suppose, or maybe to their steadfast refusal to take themselves too seriously, but the Oxford stompers are now deep into the double-digit years of their career, and still sounding remarkably fresh with each release, while so many of those acts once mentioned in the same breath have either broken up or lost their relevance.
The once-ubiquitous movement, which the British music press essentially heralded as something akin to the second coming of Christ, complete with its share of messianic drama and seething rivalries, had a great run for a while there, beginning around the mid-‘90s and lasting through the turn of the century. Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, Sleeper — they were some of the big-hitters at the center of it all, unapologetically celebrating Britishness, flag-drapery and all, through a spirited revisit of ‘60s Mod culture, punk/post-punk jitters, and New Wave electro-romanticism.
When Supergrass showed up, still in their teens and hardly concealing it, the bright-eyed scruffs seemed like the younger, sillier siblings to the art-school grads of Blur and Pulp. I imagine many folks would’ve never guessed at the time of their breakthrough 1995 single “Alright” (yep, as in “We are young/ we run green/ keep our teeth nice and clean/ see our friends, see the sights/ feel alright” — recently snagged by Walt Disney world for their feel-good commercials) that the band would still be going strong thirteen years later. Nothing against them, of course, it’s just that bands sticking together for more than a decade are a bit of a rarity.
But here they are, and their recently Brit-released sixth album, Diamond Hoo Ha (Parlophone/EMI) – to be released here 6/10 on Astralwerks — is a winner. With the demise of Pulp and Elastica and Sleeper and Suede fading further by the day, and in view of Blur’s highly unlikely on-again/off-again reformation rumors and Oasis’s having long since lost the plot, it looks like Supergrass might strike the double-bonus of longevity and sustained relevance. Hmmm, feel alright, indeed.