Supergrass
Barrowlands, Glasgow
08/06/2010

Charly the cat (from the 1970s public information films) appears on the screens at the back of the stage to loud cheers. “Do you know where your lad is going tonight?” asks another unintentionally comic blast from the past. Supergrass tapping into nostalgia for childhood japes is a fitting start to one of their final appearances as a band, since they formed the vanguard of Britpop way back in 1994.

And throughout the evening video montages illustrate each of their six albums as they work backwards, starting with tracks from ‘Diamond Hoo Ha’ performing a survey of their career. “We’ve run out of road,” says Gaz Coombes, sounding tired as he recalls the band’s first Scottish show in 1993. ‘Musical differences’ is the official reason for the band’s demise but perhaps they’ve realised the irony of singing paeans to their youth as they hit their late thirties. Each album has its highlights – ‘St Petersburg’ from their ‘difficult’ fifth album ‘Road To Rouen’; ‘Kiss Of Life’ with its Talking Heads percussion and ‘Grace’ from the otherwise rather sluggish ‘Life On Other Planets’. But the riffs and exuberance that really made this band stand out from the herd finally surface on ‘Movin’’ and ‘Pumping On Your Stereo’. As the band get younger on film, the hits and the film clips keep coming, with the power pop of ‘Richard III’ receiving a proper Barras welcome, and ‘Late In The Day’ getting the whole place singing along.

The trademark tempo changes and precise solos of their signature hits are saved until last. It’s impossible to be melancholy as the piano intro of ‘Alright’ kicks in and finally ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, whose novelty they never quite outran, still has a glorious teenage naivety. They take their bows and are gone; the monkey basket may be empty, but the tunes remain.

Lucy Brouwer