Supergrass 'Going Out'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

Gaz, Mick and Danny finally broke through big time in 1995 with 'Alright'... This storming follow-up, 'Going Out', is released on 26th February 1996 and is destined to be very large indeed.

Of course we'll never know what might have happened had they been able to supply an immediate follow-up  to the massive success of 'Alright', but as that was already the fourth UK single from their debut album (even more if you count re-releases) they ended up waiting until there were some new songs, this being the first release from their second album, albeit over a year before the rest of the album showed up. Had I known that I might have bought the CD single (I'd have got the 7" had I seen a copy at the time, but I didn't). As it transpired the album version featured a slightly different version of the track anyway, with a different outro replacing the fade, so I can't try and flog my spare copy of In It For The Money to you as a source of the track featured here.

It's also the first release to award a co-writing credit to Gaz Coombes' brother Rob, who might have played on 'Alright' (it's certainly him miming the piano part in the video) but from this point on became a semi-attached fourth member, playing keyboards and appearing in many videos but not in the cover photos; and of course the credit to "Supergrass/R.Coombes" suggests he wasn't quite an official member of the band. 'Going Out' is a cheery if not wholly substantial song, moving them further away from the punky mod-rock of their first album towards a more sixties pop sound. It also belies some of the jadedness that seemed to creep into the band once they became successful, and which is certainly more directly expressed elsewhere on the album.  Allegedly though, it does reflect some tension within the band: Danny Goffey is reported to have thought that lyrics like "If you want to go out... Read it in the papers, tell me what it's all about... Oh no, not me" (which I just took as being thrown in to give Coombes something to sing) were in fact a sly dig at the attention that he and his partner Pearl Lowe were attracting from the tabloid press at the time. To be honest, I didn't even know they were attracting that coverage, they didn't reach Liam & Patsy or even Damon & Justine levels of hype and my only knowledge of Ms Lowe at the time was seeing her band Powder on This Is Britpop Now the year before. I don't know whether the atmosphere was affected by the fact that Goffey's brother Nick was a co-director of the video; I also don't know whether Mick Quinn has a brother and whether he had anything to do with the track, but I felt bad not mentioning him.

This may be the least remembered of their four consecutive Top 5 singles but none the worse for it. Sorry I don't have a nice coloured 7" to photograph for this post though.

Also appearing on: Now 31, 37, 43, 44, 53
Available on: Supergrass Is 10 - The Best Of 94-04

Supergrass 'Moving'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

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