I Should Coco Anniversary Tour: Thirty years on, Supergrass are doing ‘Alright’

O2 Academy Birmingham, 14 May 2025

The first sign the night won’t be quite like any other gig I’ve been to is the crowds amassing outside the O2 Academy: by far, this is the oldest audience I’ve ever been a part of.

Supergrass, who shot to fame 30 years ago this week off the back of their debut album, I Should Coco, are taking an unexpected victory lap, having played what was meant to be their final reunion show in 2022. The showgoers here, almost all of them middle-aged, don’t mind the surprise chance to relive their teenage glory days, of course. Arriving at the gig having completely missed the support act, I found myself joined by most of the audience, who were apparently also uninterested in seeing anything besides Britpop’s most famous flash hit.

The band’s vocals have lost none of the jeering, youthful howl that made them such a storm with Britain’s disaffected teens of the ‘90s

It is amazing how little the years show on the band that leaps onto stage, to the caterwauling sound of air-raid sirens. Granted, the baby-faced Gaz Coombes screaming into the camera of the original 1995 album cover would probably have some disparaging words for the greying, bearded Coombes of 2025. But from the distance of the O2 balcony, they sound nearly identical.

The band’s vocals have lost none of the jeering, youthful howl that made them such a storm with Britain’s disaffected teens of the ‘90s, and the anthems have retained every bit of their swagger. As has been noted, though, the same cannot be said for the Supergrass fans. There’s the obligatory group of moshers at the front of the stalls, naturally, and perhaps this might just be because I’m in the seated area of the balcony: but for the most part, the band’s romping performance simply washes over an audience who give the impression of attending a night at the opera – applauding when needed, but not doing much else.

Yet it’s hardly the fault of Supergrass for the passage of time, it shouldn’t need to be said. To even reach this stage is arguably a sign of tremendous success, and throughout the whole night, the vibe is of a band luxuriating in the fact they’re still noteworthy enough to sell out venues after 30 years.

The band are predictably casual with each other, utterly at home on stage where they too have spent their entire adult lives performing

They haven’t let this success define them, either. Ask any casual listener to name a Supergrass song and they will always come back with ‘Alright’, the 1995 summer joyride that vastly outstrips any other song performed by the band in its popularity. Plenty of other groups might toy with an audience all so anxious to hear one anthem and drag it out until the very end of the gig. Coombes and co are unwilling to let themselves be boxed into one single brand, however: the jaunty piano chords of the song’s opener ring out after only about ten minutes, and even the middle-aged spectators with me on the balcony go wild.

The rest of the night is a hugely enjoyable one. For their part, the fans in the stands seem to do most of the singing themselves – these are familiar and well-loved songs that they’ve been singing most of their lives. The band are predictably casual with each other, utterly at home on stage where they too have spent their entire adult lives performing. You begin to wonder why they ever left – it’s clear they can’t stay away.

At one stage, a smirking Mick Quinn delights in telling the audience of “an older lady” for whom they based the lyrics for ‘She’s So Loose’ on. At another point, a member of the support act is invited to provide the acoustics to ‘Sofa (Of My Lethargy)’. The four Supergrass members are playing around, and the audience revel in it. In between songs, one fan shouts his alternating love for the different performers, who dutifully ham this up.

Supergrass have proven their flame hasn’t smouldered at all

The initial performance ends with a lovely rendition of ‘Time To Go’, and it’s another reminder of this audience’s apparent unfamiliarity with gigs that a couple of people around me do in fact leave. The band, of course, are far from done. Having performed the tracklist of I Should Coco in full, they switch smoothly into a sequence of some of their greatest hits, and it is a testament to just how richly varied Supergrass’s catalogue as every new album visited feels like an encore. Tracks from In It for the Money, Supergrass, and my personal favourite Life On Other Planets are screamed out in what is a thoroughly satisfying celebration of thirty years of alt-rock experimentation.

By the time the show ends, 40 minutes later than expected, anyone there would be left to wonder what could next lie in store for Britpop’s brightest sparks. It’s true, the group long ago swore off creating any new songs – but there was a time when they said they wouldn’t play ‘Alright’, either (“We should play it in a minor key, and in the past tense,” Coombes joked all the way back in 1999). None of the Supergrass ensemble are older than their 50s, and plenty of other greats have gone on for far longer than that. Both Coombes and Quinn have rattled around with decent solo careers, too, showing the two are surely far from done.

Ultimately, what else are you going to do? As the show attendees sang to the group’s final encore of the night, “Life is a cigarette, you smoke till the end.” Certainly, Supergrass have proven their flame hasn’t smouldered at all.

★★★★★