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“Turn the Car Around” is the name of the new, fourth album by Gaz Coombes, the singer of Supergrass, who is still touring with his former band in large halls, but no longer makes new music with her. The 46-year-old Britpop icon only releases new pieces on solo albums. The upcoming record, its first in five years, links Sixties-Beat-Bombast (“Don’t say it’s over”) with introspections in the Corona isolation (“Overnight Trains”) and stories about people who have to move into a war at the peak of their fame (“Sonny the Strong”). A conversation about pub heroes, correct behavior online and heroic boxer. An archive article from January 20, 2023.
An earlier super grass box set was called “The Strange Ones”, now they sing “Long Live the Strange”. Singing is part of pop culture – do outsiders still earn more attention?
The song is based on an experience with my daughter, we visited a concert by Cavetown, the transgender musician in Oxford. This evening brought me back to the bottom of the facts. How privileged I am actually. And what a time we live in. You can imagine how diverse the audience was-and yet everything seemed modest and down-to-Earth. I have always felt “Strange” since the beginning of my career with Supergrass 1995.
Society becomes more diverse – at the same time, hatred increases to “the others”.
I don’t try to get too involved in social media, but I look at what my daughters do. The dangers for the psyche are known – solely through the pictures that arise online. The internet has an aftertaste. It offers unimagined freedom for individual expression, but this also goes hand in hand with stigmatization of those who want to realize themselves. But everyone can do something against hostility. Just stop being an idiot. Take a deep breath before you get angry into the keys.
“Not the only thing” is inspired by her autistic daughter. How do you talk to her about her songs?
It is the continuation of my piece “The Girl Who Fell to Earth” from 2015. My daughter is particularly interested in my singing, the melodies. Sounds as a matter of course, but after my observation, younger people are more interested in bass lines or the drum rhythm. They make an exception to the songs of Harry Styles. I was also in the concert, which is sung from full throats.
“Sonny the Strong” is about boxers. Morrissey, Springsteen, Dylan and Paul Simon also sing. What fascinates it?
I looked a lot of documentation during the pandemic. Stories in which celebrities, such as Elvis, are recruited at the peak of their success for military service. Just like my fictional Sonny, the boxer. With Vitali Klitschko, a real, former boxer in Kyiv has to assert himself in the war.
In the video for “Don’t Say It’s Over” you sing in front of old people in a pub. It is actually excluded that indie musicians present themselves in corner pubs in this country. Why are the connections of British musicians to the pub so deep?
First, the song deals with the question of eternal love, so I occupied older actors for the clip. I love the social dramas Mike Leighs or “This is England” by Shane Meadows. I like Great Britain Grim and Gloomy. I see this England every day, I live in it. I already appeared in pubs when I was not allowed to do that. There were six beers as a fee. Something like that, I feel connected to the pubs forever.
They performed with super grass at the memorial concert for Taylor Hawkins in Wembley. It has to be difficult to bake smaller rolls as a solo singer, right?
No, everything is fine. We are friends and tours, but super grass no longer worked in the studio. In 2010 we dissolved in the recordings for a new record. Of course, I can imagine that our fans make it sad to see us on stage – and yet we do not publish a new work. I’m happy enough about our old stuff. “I should coco” makes me proud, a large British album, “In it for the money” too, and in part also the third, our “supergrass” album. There shouldn’t be new music, but I am also not a “Never Say Never” person.
You opened your own studio. Is it a cliché that you get too cozy in music when you can walk from the living room with a slippery into the recording room?
Of course I love check-ins into expensive, exclusive studios. But I’m more productive with my own. I just have to cross the street in front of my house. Maybe it is a little more challenging for my family – she doesn’t know when I come back. During the recordings I had films played on a canvas, such as “Gremlins”. Good for my band. Then she could watch the little monsters playing instead of having to look at the instruments constantly!