Hot Press talks to Gaz Coombes

Is it a ‘calm-before-the-storm’ feeling right now?
Most definitely! I’m eking out every last moment of calmness and relaxation before jumping straight back into the fire! I haven’t played with the guys since November; with Christmas and all that out of the way, I’m raring to go.
Congrats on Matador, you must be thrilled to get it out.
Absolutely, yeah. The record has been ready for a few months now, but you always have that lead up time – the press, promotion, all that sort. I’m really excited for people to hear it.
It’s an expansive record – was there a real sense of freedom in its creation?
Oh yeah, and I think that’s the only way I could do it; feeling kind of free to explore and experiment. It’s been a pretty amazing couple of years since the first album, where I was feeling my way a little bit, checking out possibilities and ways of doing things. This record has certainly shaped up a little more again. The way it was done was really exciting, sort of edge-of-the-seat stuff, spontaneous recording and that. I’m really pleased with how it came together.
Was there a vision for it from the start?
Well, I think a lot of it fed from the first couple of songs. ‘Buffalo’ was the first track that was completed, and I think once that was done and mixed, I felt really comfortable with moving forward with the rest of it. That was probably the seed for the whole record, really. Everything kind of grew from there.
How about now, then? Can you listen to it and spot where things were coming from?
I guess it becomes a little bit clearer, but I’m always going to see it differently. I’m really happy that I got something through. I know that it’s honest, and that’s how I’d love to hear a record. Getting into someone’s world is great, and I feel like I connected with something. There’s a coherence to the record that’s really cool, and that wasn’t necessarily apparent when you’re piecing it together, so to speak.
You played most of the instruments yourself, in a home studio. How did you find the – I won’t say solitude – but the experience of working on your own?
I had a lot of conversations with myself! It was great though, just for getting ideas and feeling free in how to approach it. I’d go down whenever I had an idea, just to put it down. I used a lot of first takes, it was pretty exciting.
You wrote a lot of the album on bass, right?
I did, yeah. It was more about whatever came along. One major thing about not working with a band is that the starting point can be just about anywhere. A lot of the time I was starting with loops, or a drum beat, or yeah, the bass. It just opens it up, stylistically, how to go about making a record.
It’s a bit of a pattern over the past 12 months – Damon Albarn, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, yourself – members of big British bands embracing electronics when going it alone. Is that just because of the breadth of opportunity?
The whole thing about making a record with a band is if you’re firing on all cylinders, there’s nothing more powerful; that singular voice created by a gang. But the opportunity to start at any point, and take an idea wherever you want it can be achieved in a really cool way. It’s a totally different process. It wasn’t important to me that I play everything – it wasn’t part of the plan or anything – but it came about by necessity, or what the song required. I mean, if I go in and put down a drum beat – listen, I’m not a great drummer by any stretch, but I can play drums – and it feels good, and it has the right mood and the right vibe, then I’d keep it. It seems pointless trying to translate that to somebody else, saying, “this is what I did, can you do exactly the same?” Looking back over a lot of the demos that I’ve done over the years, from back in the Supergrass days, you find something similar, and it’s cool; this sense of instinctive recording and writing.
Do you listen back to things from throughout your career then?
Well not so much, no, but it was more the memory of taking a cassette into rehearsals and playing it to the boys; this grimy, raw demo that was charming in a way. It was real, and raw, and part of my approach is always to avoid closed studios where you’re paying a grand a day for expensive engineers and microphones. I sometimes think that can get too easy, or it’s all just too laid out. The limitations and difficulties are some of the things that excite me most when recording – when there’s cables everywhere and the place is a mess, there’s something kind of pure about it as well.
Are you fully acclimatised to being a solo artist by now?
I don’t know, if I’m honest! All I know is that it feels right, and I’ve got to go with that gut feeling. There’s a real direction there, and a momentum too. Getting album No. 2 under my best, I can already sense album No. 3 on the horizon. That’s kind of cool, you know? Just the sense of moving forward and staying on it is really propelling me at the moment.
The darkness in the record surprised me a little…
I think it’s a mixture of light and dark, isn’t it? For me, it just mirrors the contradictions of life, really. One minute you could be on top of the world, the next minute everything is falling apart around you. It’s a fascinating side of human behaviour, that I wanted to explore a little bit.
You’ve said the same ideas featured in Supergrass songs. Was that a little more under-the-radar, and now it’s that bit more out in the open?
I guess that’s something for you guys to decide – I’m so inside it, I don’t necessarily notice that change or progression. But yeah, look, Supergrass were a diverse band, where we could tap into most emotional areas. I guess it’s inevitable that there’s going to be more of me, and what I’ve been involved in for the past 20 years. There’s always going to be parts that people recognise… It’s been important for me to evolve – it was on my mind for the first record. You can’t live off the legacy or expectations of Supergrass. It was starting again, and that was a really exciting part of it for me.
It’s just such a different time now. Of course I learned a lot, and I can look back and see a lot of what shaped who I am now. I grew up in the public eye, and I guess I did a lot of learning early on. Equally, I don’t like to look back too much. Where I’m at right now, it’s about keeping it fresh going forward.
You already mentioned album No. 3; is it something already coming together, or will you wait until you have the time to sit down and spend time on it?
I really like the early conception to be very instinctive. I’ll have a feeling about something – musically – that I want to explore, and probably something that I haven’t really delved into much, or maybe that I hinted at on this record, and I’m sure it will expand from there. But it’s always that exciting moment when you kind of think about those first couple of days getting into studio. It’s always a bit of a buzz.
Has getting older changed your approach?
I don’t think it’s made much difference. I get the same sort of energy, and I like to stay true to that; even when there’s dark moments on the record, there’s also moments where there’s full-on energy. When you see it live, you’ll certainly see that. If anything, I think I’m just more in tune with how to get that across – how to translate what’s going on in my head – and that’s less to do with ‘age’ than experience, even if they come together. I ain’t slowing down yet, mate!
I wouldn’t dare suggest it! In our Hot for 2015 issue, we’re talking to a lot of young bands and artists. Looking back, is there advice you’d have given yourself early in your career?
Avoid the brown acid?! I don’t think I’d really tell myself anything. Like, I could say 'Hide the drugs better', but even that provided us with a good single in ‘Caught By The Fuzz’! There’s no regrets, honestly. When I look back, it’s usually in a conversation about the old days, and in the main we made the right decisions, I feel. Look, it’ll come out in the book, I’m sure! The book that I haven’t written; I have to wait for a few more people to disappear first…