Supergrass
The Metro, Sydney, Australia, 25 February 2000

Pasty boys come of age

How Supergrass must hate the "maiden aunt" aspect of their career, the equivalent of the pinching cheeks and wet smacking kisses on the cheek. In the case of the Oxford trio-cum-quartet (singer/guitarist Gaz Coombe's brother now plays keyboards), it's a whole raft of reviewers saying things like "my, how they've grown" and "why, I remember when they were just this high".
But it's hard not to do it when you remember the last time the band toured Australia, some three years ago. Then, with two of the band barely out of their teens, they played mid afternoon at the Big Day Out - three pasty, skinny boys sweating like Albert Brooks in the high heat and harsh light And they loved it; so did we.
Like the best songs from their debut, I Should Coco - in particular Alright and Caught By the Fuzz - they were buoyant, wide-eyed and too much fun to allow cynicism to show through in either band or audience.
Sure it was relatively unsophisticated, more bratty than brilliant, but what a kick they gave the day.
Two albums later, they are something else entirely. They come now as a seriously tight, powerful rock band with the nerve and ability to be prog rock one minute, poster boy power pop the next and glam next time around.
They come too as a band which can deliver a deceptively simple song such as Pumping on Your Stereo - all Diamond Dogs/Ziggy era Bowie in the verses and Gerry Rafferty on steroids in the chorus - without needing to shout how clever they are. Or unburden It's Not Me by performing it with only guitar and two keyboards.
Most importantly, they now give us depth as well as width without having lost the cheeky verve that attracted us in the first place. After all Sun Hits the Sky is so much a barrel of fun - a chance to shake your head and add backing vocals at full volume - that you can miss the Slade-like crunch.
And Richani III still makes your dancing leg twitch despite now having a bulldog bite to its punky pop.
Complexity and entertainment from the band some once voted most likely to fall apart when puberty hit but now looking like The Faces for this decade?
How about that. Or as someone's maiden aunt surely would have said after this show: "Haven't the boys done themselves proud?"

Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald - 26 February 2000