Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/08/05
Label: Parlophone

While recording their fifth album in a converted barn in Rouen, Normandy, may have given Supergrass an opportunity too good to miss for the title's play on words, there's more to the name than the mere comedy value of a pun. First off, the Oxford four briefly split-up during its making. Secondly, given that they've opted to redefine Supergrass with it, it's a nod to the fact that it could yet be their undoing.

That Gaz Coombes's mother died prior to its writing clearly influenced the melancholic air which colours the albums twilight melodies and tempers the rock-out moments. But it was last year's tenth anniversary retrospective which prompted the shift away from goodtime belters to understated maturity. Realising that they'd done cheeky to death, the need to be remembered for something 'a bit more complex', became apparent. And so it is that "Road To Rouen" is a personal ambition, more than a personal album. Rather than consumed with mourning loved ones, it's dedicated to proving that Supergrass are just as capable of songs of grace and substance as they are perky three minute ditties.

The strength of Coombes & Co's feeling that this is a move that had to be made, whatever the consequences, is plain to hear on "Tales Of Endurance (Parts 4,5 & 6)". "Don't look down because it's far to fall," he murmurs to the Stonesy swagger of chugging acoustic guitars and a juke joint piano, "hail commercial suicide and kiss the life you left behind." Yet while undoubtedly a gamble, delivering an album of late night introspection - which winds from brooding to grandiose - isn't quite the all-in move he makes out. If not what they're best known for, twilight melancholy has always been some of their strongest suites, and essentially, this is an album of "Late In The Day"s.

And while tinged with sadness, it's hardly morose. The sleepy cowboy plod of "St. Petersburg" comes with a bittersweet optimism, as does the widescreen, Beatles-y shuffle of "Sad Girl". The orchestra-laden "Roxy" swells with teary-eyed strings and then thunders into bass-heavy psychedelic sleaze, and just in case anyone feared that their cheeky charm might be entirely a thing of the past, the jaded "Kick In The Teeth" opens with "A kick in the teeth makes it hard to smile" and then proceeds to deliver a snarling slew of sarcastic one-liners to an ex.

Mean and moody, sweet and tender, understated and piled high with Arabian horns, cinematic atmospheres and rock'n'roll posturing, it certainly lives up to the claim of being 'a bit more complex'. But most of all it's a beginning to end enchanting and addictive album, from a great band who've finally decided to grow-up.

    by Dan Gennoe