Single Of The Week

Supergrass: Mansize Rooster (Parlophone)

Something's up. This you can tell by the way the various NME sophisticates - normally more than happy with a crate of Bollinger and a quick slouch on the office chaise longue - have had to be nailed to their desks. Why? To prevent them from rushing off, kit bags and a-swinging, to hitchhike around the country in hot pursuit of the Supergrass tour.

See, today's lesson is How To Get It Right. Supergrass, to re-re-re-cap, are three smiley sorts from Oxford who've spent the past six months poleaxing all and sundry with a potent blend of punky dynamics, glammy effervescence and soaring '60s harmonies. There is little surprise in 'Mansize Rooster', then, which starts like Madness and then gallops off, guitars blazing and piano plonking, into the hysterical stomp-mungous realm, of, say, Wizzard. This is no lie.

As if that wasn't enough 'Odd?' also ambles in á la Madness before sashaying off to the bedroom to dress up in all manners of splendid shimmering John Barry fabrics. 'Odd?' - naturally enough - is mearly the bonus 'throwaway' track on the CD. Gits.

To summerise then: Supergrass are hysterical, hysterically funny and quite terrifyingly talented. They should be modelling stack heels with green mohicans and three button mohair suits, but they aren't. And if they came round your house they wouldn't demand poncey Earl Grey tea. Good.

As Michael Fish would say, storming.

NME - 04 February 1995