Supergrass return with this their sixth offering, following up their “let’s be mature” offering, Road to Rouen, the cheeky chaps have decided to veto that route in an attempt to capture some of their early records’ youthful exuberance. They succeed in some ways but fail drastically in others. First and foremost, nothing on this record would stand up against any song on their first two albums for the sheer fact that back in the day Supergrass were young, free, with teeth nice and clean, nowadays they’re pretty old, probably all married off and teeth-wise who knows. As a result Diamond Hoo Ha sounds a tad pretentious; certainly any glimmer of authenticity isn’t too apparent with the band sounding more Americanised than ever before and Gaz doing his best mountain-ranger, gun-slinging highwayman croon over every song. However there’s nothing on this record that offends too much either, you put it on, the band are loud, raucous, energetic and the production is sharp and concise, the only thing missing is memorable songs, something which Supergrass are not normally prone to forget about. The title track has a pretty stonking riff albeit straight out the Jack White School of rock, and Bad Blood and Rebel in You threaten but never quite manage to reach the classic pop heights of the bands early material, but could sit comfortably on latter album Life on Other Planets, which was another generally weak offering from the ‘Grass. Overall what you have is a competent, but not quite good enough effort, certainly Supergrass are a band with the potential to do great things but this time round it’s too glam, it’s too superficial and ultimately pretty forgettable. Dig out In It for the Money or the band’s recent collection of singles to hear exactly what an on form Supergrass is capable of.
//Alan Souter