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The last Top 10 single by Supergrass is a record I've always felt curiously ambivalent about. I can appreciate it, and I caught myself mumbling along with the chorus once or twice while I was playing it back. And yet somehow I wouldn't say I liked it. Part of the trouble is that it's yet another in the seemingly endless catalogue of songs about the frustrations of life as a touring musician, which is always difficult to sympathise with, unfair as this might be; it wasn't even new subject matter for the band, who'd already covered this topic on such songs as 'It's Not Me' and 'You Can't See Me'. The video only accentuates this, of course.
I think there might be more to it than that, though. Something to do with the fact that even though their first album, I Should Coco, was one of my favourites at the time, I didn't bother to buy the third one. In fact, even when my dad got a free copy of it, I don't think I ever got round to listening to it before I left home. They sound very jaded at this point in their career - which might not be inappropriate for the subject matter of this particular song, but spoils the experience a bit anyway. The production (by the band themselves) sounds a bit stodgy and fails to capture the energy of their earlier work. It's hard not to suspect that at this point in their career, they were trying too hard to escape the shadow of their biggest hit, 'Alright'.
Mind you, it hasn't got any worse over the years, and probably sounds better in this context near the end of a long disc than as the opener to an album.
Also appearing on: Now 31, 33, 37, 43, 53
Available on: Supergrass
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