Advanced Warning!

"It's sounding great," declares chirpy Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, stung at the suggestion that they've taken too damn long to follow up 1999's self-titled third album. "Our heads and hearts weren't really in the last one but we're more confident now. We want people to see our new directions - or is it out nude erections? Hur!"
Still, the ever-affable Goffey admits that it hasn't been the easiest of gestations. The band spent most of last year in a French chateau trying to write, but were stricken by laziness and high living.
"We actually spent most of the time getting pissed," he admits. "But we've knuckled down since last Christmas. There are mortgage payments to be made!"
Suitably re-focused rather than "refreshed", the band and producer Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air) have been shuttling between Mayfair studios in London, Heliocentric in Rye and Rockfield in Wales. Tracks are mostly upbeat and fast, Goffey says, including the stomping Dexys Midnight Runners/James Brown homage Stinkfinger, the "ska-Stooges mash-up" of Brecon Beacons and the "Floyd-y" Prophet, which imagines a dinner party in Heaven for those who faced persecution on earth. I Have Never Done Nothing Like That Before, meanwhile, is "a dead punky spanker".
"We're happy," concludes Goffey. "It's all drinking beer, smoking joints, seeing friends. But now you'll have to excuse me - I have to be photographed on an ostrich farm for the cover."

Q - July 2002