Grass Roots

Bursting onto the Brit-pop scene with one of the breeziest pop tunes ever recorded (“Alright”) and an equally lightweight video that saw its members making faces and jumping on a mechanical bed, Supergrass immediately established itself as a band of carefree, irreverent rebels, providing a low-angst alternative to moodier groups, such as Oasis and Radiohead, much the same way as Green Day countered Nirvana and Pearl Jam in 1994. “Caught by the Fuzz,” another single from the group’s irresistible 1995 debut, I Should Coco, cemented the trio’s “lovable scamps” reputation, as singer Gaz Coombes relayed a story of his arrest at age 15. If the details seemed fresh in his mind, it was because Coombes was still only 18 (his bandmates were in their early 20s). Fans were drawn to the group’s youthful energy and undeniable charisma — among the more notable were Calvin Klein, who asked Coombes to model, and Steven Spielberg, who proposed a Monkees-style sitcom.

The band declined both and instead concentrated on its 1997 follow-up, In It for the Money, which added lush instrumentation and increasingly Beatles-like melodies to the mix. Still, music writers and fans latched onto the group’s impish video for the soulful “Late in the Day,” in which Coombes, bassist Mick Quinn, and drummer Danny Goffey bounced in time with the beat on pogo sticks and continued to refer to Supergrass as bratty, brash, and/or snotty clown princes. While these seemingly negative terms were almost always paired with praise (the brats were “adorable,” their immaturity was “appealing”), the words projected an image that no longer fit the music.

The band’s latest, self-titled album strays even farther from the debut’s straightforward guitar pop, delving into soul, funk, and R&B between high-energy rockers and sprawling progressive experimentation. But group members opted to throw fans off their trail by releasing the album’s perkiest cut, “Pumping on Your Stereo,” as the band’s single and pairing it with a video that used Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create 12-foot puppet replicas of the band members, who played various singing instruments. Oh, giggled the press, there go those cheeky chaps again.

Yet for all they’ve done to further this image, Quinn says, they don’t necessarily embrace it. “People think we sit around with hats with propellers on them, and that can get really annoying,” he says, punctuating the sentence with an exasperated laugh. “I think we’ve got a healthy disrespect for what we do. Maybe if we paid more attention and spent more time culturing a mature, very cool image, then we wouldn’t have to deal with all that stuff. We try and take our music quite seriously, but the rest of it we don’t. I suppose people get confused by that.”

Some people were doubtlessly confused by Supergrass’ video for “Mary,” its latest single. Filled with horrific and genuinely spooky imagery, it’s as if the propellers twirled free from those beanies and started impaling passersby with razor-sharp blades, splattering the screen with blood. British MTV responded by banning the video outright. As for domestic MTV, Supergrass’ only forums for airplay — shows such as Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes — have disappeared from the schedule, and “Mary” isn’t likely to garner enough teen votes to make it onto TRL. The only real option for Supergrass fans is to download the clip from the band’s Web site, www.childrenofthemonkeybasket.com.

“This is the first video that we the band have actually scripted, which is quite worrying, because it got banned and it was pretty sick and stuff,” Quinn says. “For us, we’re always sort of playing with humor, and it just seemed funny to us. It’s a very dark humor. It’s based on horror movies that we used to watch in the mid- to late-’70s and early ’80s — very bleak and bleached-out. It really fits the song, which is quite a dark, sleazy little basement number.”

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The banning of the “Mary” video might represent the end of an era, with one of the most visually innovative acts to appear on MTV opting to keep its art confined to records and the stage. “Obviously we’re far more interested in making music,” Quinn admits. “It’s very hard for us to invest energy in a video like ‘Mary’ — to actually put down our foot and say we want to do this video how we want to do it — and then just not see it get played anywhere. It’s sad.”

Fortunately, American fans don’t have to rely on MTV for Supergrass spottings, since the group has embarked on its first-ever U.S. arena tour as the opening act for Pearl Jam. It’s late in the season, which might lead to some unpredictable weather conditions at outdoor amphitheaters, but Quinn, a veteran of European outdoor festivals, remains unconcerned.

“We did a show this year in Scotland where there was just buckets of rain, and it was quite disheartening to go out on stage and see that,” he says. “We’ve done the whole gauntlet of weather conditions, except a snow blizzard, and it always amazes me that people can actually stand there and watch us play. I guess we must be doing something right.”

One of the keys to the group’s acclaimed live performances is its ability to translate its orchestrated work into stripped-down rock. While Supergrass featured everything from keyboards, cellos, violin, viola, and bicycle pumps, the group prefers not to take additional musicians on the road or to use prerecorded tracks of the impossible-to-duplicate segments.

“A live band should be quite raw,” Quinn says. “I’m always sort of weary of making it too lush in the studio, but it never bothers me to do stuff that we can’t reproduce live, because I think you can reinterpret it. That’s what makes live gigs worth going to.”

Another way Supergrass concerts differ from recorded efforts stems from Quinn’s reluctance to step into the spotlight. His lower-pitched voice adds a new dimension to the band’s sound on “Beautiful People” and “Mama & Papa,” which mark his first turns as lead vocalist, although he’s contributed regularly to group harmonies.

“It’s not something I’ve been pushing or anything,” he says. “I’ve been doing lots of vocals with Gaz and I’ve sung a lot live, but to be honest, I don’t feel comfortable singing a lead vocal live. I find it very easy in the studio to sing, but I’m not really a performer in that sort of sense. It’s never been the case that Gaz writes all the lyrics so he’s the singer, because we’ve all pitched in on the lyrics, but at the end of the day Gaz is probably going to end up singing it live.”

Quinn’s cuts are among the reasons that, now that the full effect of the record has set in, critics are starting to tout the group’s “maturing process.” Coombes shot down this phrase in an interview with Revolver, saying, “It’s a bit of a slag thing to say,” because it implies that previous Supergrass efforts were immature. “There probably was a maturing process,” Quinn admits. “I’ll just say we’re more relaxed with what we’re doing. When we went in to make this record, we’d already produced In It for the Money, so we knew our own capabilities. It’s probably a mature sound, but what we find insulting is that term implies middle-of-the-road boring music, and that’s the sort of thing that we rebel against. We’re very contrary human beings, so we’ll probably come back and do a really raucous record next time. It’s just the process of making a more relaxed record that makes it sound more mature. We’re still as imbecilic as ever.”