Supergrass, Road to Rouen

I’ve been a fair-weather Supergrass fan, I’m afraid. I loved ’em when they first emerged, kicking and spitting, out of that shiny-clean era of Blur-obsessed Britpop, saw them play an amazing show here in Houston to a shamefully small crowd of local hipsters (at a club that no longer exists, naturally), tried my best to emulate the near-falsetto vocals, cracked up at the chipmunk-sounding “We’re Not Supposed To,” and marveled that a bunch of kids younger than me could create an album as carefree, catchy, and wild as I Should Coco. They were great, with only better things to come.

And then…well, not much, at least not from my end of it. The three lads of Supergrass (guitarist/vocalist Gaz Coombes, bassist Mickey Quinn — who I always suspected of being a hobbit refugee from Middle Earth — and drummer Danny Goffey; actually, there’s a fourth pseudo-member, as well, keyboardist Rob Coombes) rode the wave of critical adoration ’til it crashed, then proceeded to put out three more albums — ’97’s In It for the Money, ’99’s Supergrass, and ’02’s Life on Other Planets — a best-of comp, and a slew of singles, all without ever really hitting that promised pot of gold at the end of the rock rainbow. And me? I saw the albums come and go, and for some reason, I never bothered to get any of ’em. I can’t explain why; I just didn’t.

I’m now kicking myself. I’ve heard good and bad things about the intervening albums, but damn, if they’re anywhere near as good as Road to Rouen, I should’ve plunked down the cash for them a long time ago. I started out a little nervous with “Tales of Endurance (Parts 4, 5 & 6)” (which, by the way, is awful short at 5:30 for a three-part “epic”), wondering how the band of punky, Buzzcocks-loving youngsters I used to know had gone from that to this drifting, country-inflected rock that reminded me of the Beta Band more than the Who. Then the raunchy, Rolling Stones-esque stomp kicked in, and I realized that the band’s grown up, to the point where they don’t need to do the all-out rock thing all the time. “St. Petersburg,” a surprisingly down-tempo, almost mournful bit of English blues-rock, a little like the stuff the Kinks used to play, provided more proof, as did “Sad Girl,” a dramatic Motown soul revamp done Nick Drake-style.

The highlight of the disc for me (although it was difficult to pick, admittedly) is the raucous majesty of “Roxy,” a glorious rave-up of a rock song the likes of which I haven’t heard since the Verve flashed in their happy little pan and vanished. I’d declare the song to be the band’s new “Caught by the Fuzz,” the track that would propel ’em back to radio prominence, but truthfully, the damn thing’s too complex for that — it dances between roaring rock glory and soft-touch balladry ’til both sides crash into one another at full speed and collapse into nothing. In this age of quick-hit rock icons, I don’t know how well the music world at large would receive something like that.

Out of all of Road to Rouen, only the title track and “Kick in the Teeth” sound much like the Supergrass of old, but even those two songs sound tougher somehow, less cocky and more self-assured. “Road to Rouen,” in particular, is supremely confident, a ’70s-ish bit of funky rock that brings to mind New Yorkers the Strokes…if, that is, the Strokes actually knew what the rockstar life was like when they started singing about it. This album is the sound of a band that knows what it’s doing and doesn’t give a shit what anybody else thinks, and Supergrass pulls it off wonderfully, even delivering a silly, tropical-sounding instrumental interlude mid-album (“Coffee in the Pot”) with such a straightforward lack of sarcasm that it seems to fit perfectly.

Taken as a whole, Road to Rouen comes off like what its title and cover art implies: it’s a road album. There’s a momentum here, as the songs cruise along, never missing a beat, creating a feeling of nonstop motion, of movement. It’s like part of the soundtrack for some long-lost tour movie of an obscure British Invasion band, traveling from town to town and rocking whichever way they can, never sure what the next day’ll bring. Specifically, though, Road is that part of the film where the tour bus careens across an alien European continent in the dark and the guys in the band are all moody and introspective, sitting apart at their own windows and watching the night-time lights blur together.