Supergrass present Diamond Hoo Ha Men
Live from London (iTunes EP)

January 15th, Gaz and Danny played a seated(!) 'Diamond Hoo Ha Men' set at the 'Apple' store in London's Regent Street, to keep the new songs hot and spark the fans eagerly awaiting the new album. The set was recorded and six tracks are now available as an excluisive download through I-Tunes.

Opening track 'Outside' is one of the new songs to appear on the upcoming 'Diamond Hoo Ha' album and is played here in the 'White Stripes'-like setting of drums, guitar and vocals. The hammered guitar-intro soon slips into fuzzed chords, to which Danny adds melody-defining drums. The sparse instrumentarium forces the duo to play the track quite basic, which gives an unfortunately not very convincing rough sketch only. Something which '345' suffers less, as this is quite a straight-forward rock song. It still sounds quite basic, even though the guitar attempts to fill in several gaps. 'Never Done Nothing Like That Before', announced as 'A Supergrass cover' is evenly convincing, as is 'Lenny'. 'New single 'Diamond Hoo Ha Man' is mainly constructed around drums and guitar, which makes it the best song of the duo-setting on this release. Near the end of the live set, Mick joined in and 'Caught By The Fuzz', included on this EP, was one of two tracks the band played as a near-complete band. The sound immediately grows and shows what the other tracks lacked: the extra layer(s) of instruments.

The songs weren't really meant to be played in a drum/guitar setting, which shows quite clearly. Nevertheless the EP is far from bad and gives a very good impression of what to expect from the new album. And it's a great account on the creative way the unplanned temporary absence of Mick was dealt with.

Leo Hoek van Dijke - 13 February 2008
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