Road To Rouen

Supergrass are survivors and don’t we just hate them for it? This has nothing to do with their music, a blokey psychedelia informed by a flair for everyman pop, and everything to do with cosmic justice.
There’s a sense that Supergrass have cheated their destiny. In rock – as in love, life and reality television – there are certain, fundamental rules. Why can’t Supergrass play along, like everyone else?
Score an early novelty hit, for instance and, when you least anticipate it, obscurity is supposed to come knocking.
Likewise, embark upon a sophisticated, ‘maturer’ direction and, according to the rulebook, fans are entitled to scorn you as jumped-up egoists, who think you're too good for the pop game.
We’ve grown up believing in these things. They are the truths we hold dear. Supergrass, 11 years into a career and still developing as songwriters, threaten to screw up our value system.
By now, of course, much of our resentment has run dry. We’re over ‘Alright’, the summer breeze-pop hit that you wanted to smack about the head until it bled.
Post-'Richard III', we’ve come to terms with the ‘real’ Supergrass: neo-proggers with an appetite for lumbering riffs and melodic aggression.
The public has even forgiven Gaz Coombes, the band’s pre-naturally hairy frontman, his campaigning on behalf of outrageous sideburns.
For their fifth album, the Oxford four-piece explores the darkness at the edge of their sound.
Spectrally arranged, Road To Rouen comes on like a trip to rock’s tundra-belt. The record begins as it means to continue, with shrill Spanish guitars, nervy piano lines and – some time later – the languid approximation of a tune.
The tumult settles, finally, into a song, the fragmented, Mexicano-flavoured ‘Tales Of Endurance’.
Over honky-tonk bass and whiskey-sour rhythm guitar, Coombes sings in a whispered croon, as though he’s only just woken and isn’t quite sure of his surroundings or, indeed, what his first name is.
Glimpses of the ‘impish’ Supergrass that, really, never existed, surface during ‘St Petersburg’, a preening pop single locked in a decompression chamber.
Up-front, sits a nagging, uneasy hook and lyrics that conjure murky psychological vistas. Yes, this is still a Supergrass album and we’re frightened too.
On ‘Sad Girl’ and ‘Roxy’, meanwhile, lush keyboard washes and chocolate-box string arrangements conjure a jarring mood change. There is a hint of creative conflict, as if Supergrass, riven by multiple personalities, are waging a subtle war upon themselves.
Nobody will mistake Road To Rouen for a masterpiece. Yet, indulging their melancholy side, these former Brit-rock moppets have crafted something ghostly and profound. In 2005, Supergrass is zen.