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home » festivals » Truck festival » Truck Festival 2009
Supergrass are alright as Sunday headliners at TruckTruck Festival 2009 reviewWednesday 29th July 2009 After the undoubted success of Ash's headline slot the previous night, and with the Truck organisers having pulled off something of a coup in securing their services, Oxford heroes Supergrass appear to have been presented with an open goal in the shape of tonight's festival-closing set.
They attack opening song 'Diamond Hoo Ha Man', injected with Led Zeppelin-style blues riffing and a thundering bassline, with vigour and things look promising as they tear straight into a crowd-pleasing 'Richard III'. But by the time things have settled down and they follow up with the minor-key plod of 'She's So Loose', from 'I Should Coco', and the sleazy 'Mary', which features jaunty Hammond organ and dreamy "ah yah yah" chorus, the sound is disappointingly quiet and the early party atmosphere gripping their audience rapidly begins to ebb away. It may be that it's Sunday night and people have begun to drift home, or the now steadily-falling, monotonous drizzle and plummeting temperatures, but this headline set appears in danger of turning into a slightly mundane, low-key affair and Supergrass don't, on the face of it, look as hell-bent on delivering the goods as Ash did 24 hours ago. More material from last year's 'Diamond Hoo Ha' album follows before they return to more crowd-pleasing fare with 'Late In the Day', from 1997's 'In It For The Money'. Singer Gaz Coombes strums out the opening acoustic guitar chords and the night sky is filled with the airy, reflective vocal, delivered in his abrasive, yet soulful growl. A tumbling fill from drummer Danny Goffey ushers in the rest of the band, and things look up, but the weedy sound is still something of an issue. The bouncy 'Rebel In You' feels like mid-tempo filler before being twisted surprisingly and briefly into a lovely, downbeat take on 'Sunday Morning' by the Velvet Underground. The tempo is picked up for a moment as 'Grace' bounces along in all of its romping, Stonesy glory and garners a bigger response from the crowd, as they join in with Coombes to howl "Save your money for the children" in the chorus. A pair of dreamy, slow-burners follow in the shape of 'St Petersburg', from 2005's 'Road To Rouen', and 'Moving', released a startling 10 years ago on 'Supergrass'. 'St Petersburg' is beautiful. Tender, slow and infused with tender piano and bittersweet vocals. It brings the mood back down, but is lovely nonetheless.
Coombes dedicates the spiky, awkward 'Where The Strange Ones Go' to days spent under-age drinking in Oxford and stealing your parents' money to buy whisky, to near-universal empathy from his audience. With the rain getting heavier and starting to win the battle with people's attention, they launch into the anthemic 'Sun Hits The Sky', another of their most recognisable singles, with bitter irony. It is powered out and pushed headlong into an extended ending, punctuated with fizzing electronic noises. The biggest crowd reaction is reserved for 'Pumping On Your Stereo', the band's most unashamedly Stones-influenced song. Its cheeky, funk bassline, stabbing piano chords, jagged, chopped-out bar chords and Jagger-like vocal draw those who have stayed to brave the miserable conditions up into a joyful, bouncing mass. Given a warm response, they return for a quick encore, finishing proceedings with the seminal teenage anthem 'Caught By The Fuzz'. All flourishing guitars, rattling snare and desperate, edgy vocals it's another undoubted highlight of their set – raw, reckless and naïve and a reminder of just how far Supergrass have evolved and changed course as a band over the years. From such punky, audacious beginnings, sounding like the Buzzcocks or The Undertones, they've become at turns thoughtful, accomplished, bloated, plodding and mature. Tonight's set sees them visit all of those characteristics and the end result? Well, to paraphrase Supergrass themselves, it's alright. Nothing more, nothing less. review by Gary Walker photos by Steve Palmer
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