Nothing makes you feel older than a band whose career you've followed almost from the start releasing a greatest hits album, but that's what Supergrass did last year. Bands that get old tend to get all "mature," and the last thing a band like Supergrass needs is maturity-- their best songs thrive on youthful energy and a naive appropriation of influences you didn't know could be mixed together.
So I was hoping for a mid-life crisis on Road to Rouen, the band's fifth album. The terrible pun in the title is a good start, but they're still mellowing, settling into their success and putting their swagger in a less visible place. They're good enough songwriters that they can survive slowing down a bit, but there's no question that this is Supergrass' least-exciting album yet.
Granted Road to Rouen does have a fistful of killer moments during its brief under-40 runtime. You get the swamp-rocking title track and its companion "Kick in the Teeth", which together make up the album's late-energy burst. "Road to Rouen" is stuffed with nasty descending riffs and volume pedal swells to back up Gaz Coombes' blue-eyed soul croon. On an album that resides mostly in slower tempos, it becomes clear just what a great singer Coombes is: He has a rich, nuanced voice that sounds great shouting or navigating a delicate melodic phrase.
"St. Petersburg" is something of an underwhelming lead single, a mid-tempo shuffle on which everything from the piano to the vocal is merely workmanly; the most interesting thing in the song is its stretchy string arrangement, which twists and pulls like taffy. It doesn't seem like something that would make the Supergrass Is 20 compilation in 2014. More likely candidates include album opener "Tales of Endurance (parts 4, 5 & 6)", a song that plays a lot like something from the band's self-titled third album, with a lengthy intro of acoustic strumming, piano. and echoing slide guitar. Trumpets and strings break in to announce the groove and the band slinks through a darkly funky verse, finally exploding after a second orchestral interlude into a big, stomping chorus with shades of "What Went Wrong (In Your Head?)".
Unfortunately, Supergrass doesn't really ever harness any of the momentum they create on individual songs to make a truly great LP, throwing away the peak they reach on the epic, six-and-a-half-minute power ballad "Roxy" on a meaningless, jokey interlude called "Coffee in the Pot". There's a lot to love here, and Supergrass is still a killer band when they get in their groove, but there's definitely a noticeable lack of the hunger that once dripped from their music, no sneer to bring it all crashing home. Road to Rouen will get its spins in my house, but I'm crossing my fingers for the mid-life crisis next time out.
