RIP Supergrass

So, that’s that, then – on a clammy, sweat-drenched night in Brixton, me and 5000 other ear-piercingly appreciative Supergrass fans bade farewell to Gaz and co. at their last ever UK show. Supergrass, a British institution, their presence on the musical landscape a reassuring comfort that ‘hey, whatever happens, at least we’ve still got Supergrass’, are no more – they’ll play one more show in Paris tomorrow (anyone else find it odd that such purveyors of classic British pop are putting the full stop on their lifespan across the Channel?) and then that’s it.

Such a decisive move to go ‘here’s our last gigs, then we’re off’ feels very much in the Supergrass spirit – here’s a band, after all, so straight-forward (and ace for it) that their vastly underrated ‘Road To Rouen’ was met with sneers not because they’d started veering into Krautrock synth experimentation but because it had a lot of acoustic guitar on it. That was the point, perhaps, they realised they were fighting a losing battle – having burst onto the scene with such infectiously youthful enthusiasm, they, it seemed, weren’t only not gonna be able to age gracefully, they were gonna be chastised for aging at all.

But as they eschewed playing ‘Alright’ for the last decade of their career, more polished and sophisticated takes on their glammed-up indie-stomps surfaced. If last night’s chronogically reversed set proved anything (they began with songs from ‘Diamond Hoo Ha’, then ‘Road To Rouen’ before finally landing on ‘I Should Coco’ just over an hour later), it’s that the one theme running through Supergrass’ career has been their ability to continually knock out effortlessly hooky melodies. The likes of ‘Rush Hour Soul’, ‘Grace’, ‘Diamond Hoo Ha Man’, ‘Rebel In You’, ‘Bad Blood’, ‘Tales Of Endurance’ and ‘St Petersburg’ might all be overlooked when it comes to compiling Supergrass’ best, but last night, played in the first half of the set, they underlined an evolution in their songwriting that shows more to Supergrass than their cheeky-chappy surges. It was, inevitably, the second half of the set (the material from the first three albums – keep up, yeah?) where the euphoria reached fever pitch, though – every song a giant, twatting reminder at just how many great songs Supergrass spat out in such a short space of time. The last section – where they darted from ‘In It For The Money’ to ‘Richard III’ to ‘Late In The Day’ to ‘Sun Hits The Sky’ to ‘She’s So Loose’ to ‘Mansize Rooster’ to ‘Strange Ones’ to ‘Lenny’ to ‘Alright’ to ‘Caught By The Fuzz’ – is the most overwhelmingly amazing 45 minutes of any gig I’ve ever seen, and not due to any big production tricks – just cos the songs are so, so good.

And, now, the songs are all we’re left with. Whatever Gaz, Danny and Mickey (and Rob) do next, it’ll be a clean slate. Gaz, you hope, will live up to the fact that he’s one of the best rock’n’roll guitarists – and singers – to emerge from the 90s, doing more justice to that fact than he did with him and Danny’s pointless covers album as The Hot Rats. Danny, meanwhile, is already on a path to anticlimax, having announced he’ll be drumming for Babyshambles on their next tour, whilst Mickey, well I dunno, what does Mickey do outside Supergrass? For now, though, maybe it’s best to cherish the past for a while, and the passing of a band who’ve defined a huge chunk of British indie. Bye, bye Supergrass – you’ll be missed, massively.