EXPLORATION & DISCOVERY

Marking his 10th year as a solo artist, Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes released his fourth solo album to date, Turn The Car Around on January 13. Headliner sat down with him for an in-depth chat about musical discovery, calling time on his old band, exploring themes of masculinity through songwriting, and why he has no idea where he is headed next…

Gaz Coombes occupies something of a niche in the pantheon of great British songwriters. When Supergrass emerged at the height of Britpop as a trio of baby-faced upstarts, early singles like Alright and Caught By The Fuzz became instant classics; impossibly hooky vignettes of youthful abandon and misdemeanor that would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the biggest hits of the ‘90s and etch themselves permanently into the pages of iconic 20th century guitardriven pop. Subsequent releases such as Richard III, Sun Hits The Sky, Moving, and Pumping On Your Stereo would serve only to reinforce their status as masters of melody and purveyors of some of the finest singles of the era.

But while their songs have undeniably stood the test of time, the band’s frontman has not found himself fixed by the media gaze in the way that some of his contemporaries have been. The absence of highprofile spats with other artists, or a reluctance to engage in the public sniping and macho posturing that typified so much of UK indie rock at the time, has perhaps led to Coombes being perceived as a more anonymous figure; simultaneously a musical national treasure and one of its most underrated talents.

When Supergrass split over a decade ago, Coombes’s transition from band leader to solo artist was also scrutinized to a far lesser degree than some of his peers. An obvious case in point being the demise of Oasis, where the anticipation of where the brothers Gallagher would tread musically was almost secondary to the inevitable slagging match that would ensue between them.

This, it seems, has been to Coombes’s benefit. With no such baggage on his shoulders, he has spent the past 10 years releasing a volley of everintriguing, ever-evolving records that rank among his finest creations to date. His latest and fourth solo album Turn The Car Around, a refined blend of pop melodies, fuzz infused rock, and gentle acoustic numbers, feels very much like the distillation of everything he has produced since breaking out on his own. What’s more, that instantly recognizable vocal has simply grown richer over the years, seemingly immune from the ravages of almost three decades in the business. Few voices in British pop have aged this well.

When Coombes joins Headliner over Zoom to discuss how Turn The Car Around came into being, he explains that he always felt the record needed to draw a line under his solo output so far. Following 2015’s Matador and 2018’s World’s Strongest Man, he says he publicly declared the record as the final installment of a trilogy purely to put pressure on himself to mix things up next time out.

“What I said was sort of bollocks,” he says with a laugh, sitting in the newly built studio at the end of his garden where much of the new album was made. “I publicly said it was the end of a trilogy to back myself into a corner. I don’t know if it is... well, it is, as I’ve said it now! That was the point. I wanted it to be set in stone so that it pushes me onto something completely different next time. I don’t want to start the next record like I’ve started the last three, which have all been made in a very similar approach or process. I just decided I wanted whatever I do next to be different and leave this as a moment in time. And they are all totally connected. Lyrically I have got across all of the themes I was playing with, and I have explored that as much as I would like to for now.”

That warm and familiar tone of voice, such a defining feature of Coombes’s music, is very much present in conversation as well. He’s funny and thoughtful in equal measure, and generous with his time, happy to discuss at length everything from Turn The Car Around to Supergrass’s final shows this year and his performance at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, following the Foo Fighters drummer’s untimely death in 2022.

One of the aforementioned lyrical themes that courses through the trilogy he speaks of is that of masculinity. With album titles Matador and World’s Strongest Man, to recent single Sonny The Strong, it’s a subject that has been central to much of his solo work to date. Inspired by English artist Grayson Perry’s book The Descent Of Man, he explains how he has sought to discover more about himself through lyrical exploration.

“I suppose it’s not just that area, it’s everything,” he says, pausing for thought. “There was that book and other documentaries and other things I’d read; I took inspiration from many places with regards to how different people approach life and how they live their lives. Stories about what people go through to keep surviving are always really fascinating. I’ve been finding out about myself in many ways over the past 10 years, being a solo artist.

“I’M ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THAT AMAZING RECORD. I’M STILL AS PASSIONATE AS I WAS WHEN I WAS 17.”

“I spent most of my life in a band and it was an incredible time, but it’s different coming out of that and going into this. There was a lot of discovery about who I am, and along the way you are asking questions about bigger things that are happening around us - my kids, inspiring stories, problems that I see around me in the world. And you try to process those through writing and sometimes they’re really direct and other times they are really vague and just part of a mood. Like The English Ruse on Matador was definitely a time when, like so many times throughout history, the government was just so awful. I’d kind of think, well, I’m not a political writer and I don’t have that mind, but equally I can just say what I’m feeling about this situation, and I can put it into words and put it in a song.”

Given the seemingly ever-escalating political and social turmoil of the times, was there ever a chance that Coombes would address those matters more directly this time around? Or does the concept of the protest song pale before the scale of the challenges so many are facing at present?

“I don’t know,” he ponders. “There isn’t the innocence that there maybe was back in 1965 when Dylan would be a bit more overt about the element of protest with his writing. They were more innocent times. It’s like writing too much about the pandemic, which could easily have been done during the making of this record. It’s tricky - you don’t necessarily want to date it or put it in a hole. I’d like these records that I make to be quite transient and float through time, and you can go back to them whenever you want. But on the other hand, documenting what’s around us, like old books, is where you make notes of what’s happening. It’s all autobiographical essentially.”