Gaz Coombes dodges the stampeding bull

Gaz Coombes is getting better and better at finding a balance between his past with Supergrass and his new role as a solo artist. On his second solo album, he sees life as an arena in which he – as a dexterous matador – tames darkness with light.

Gaz Coombes always sported the coolest sideburns since Neil Young. And he still has them, two decades after he first started off with his band Supergrass. “I just had them because I could,” he tells us with a chuckle. “It started at school, when I was about fourteen. Maybe it set me apart, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I just thought, hey, I can grow these. I’m a man! Even though I was a kid.”

Coombes, now 38, is somewhat of a survivor. Supergrass was “like riding a wave and not stopping.” Their debut album, I Should Coco, which included the teen anthem “Alright”, is, twenty years after its release, a classic. Britpop dominated the music world back then. Amid the likes of Oasis, Blur, Verve, and Pulp, Supergrass was always somewhat of a little brother. They were too fond of having a good time to really make it big. At one stage, Steven Spielberg wanted to turn them into a contemporary version of the Monkees – they politely turned down the offer, preferring to do things under their own steam.

By the start of the new millennium, Britpop had run aground and, after six albums, Supergrass called it a day in 2010. Coombes went solo with Here Come the Bombs, on which he had still not entirely broken free of his group past and the guitars were still emphatically in the foreground. Only natural, he points out, as you don’t just shake off twenty years in a guitar band like that. “I think my head was half still in the band.”

On his second album, Matador, he has found himself a lot more. Coombes has excelled himself as a songwriter and takes a much broader approach to music than in the old Britpop days. “I wanted to create big moments that still have power and energy, but not in a one-dimensional rock way. I’ve been enjoying a lot of orchestral things and soundtracks. There’s a moment in ‘The English Ruse’ where I really wanted to go for this Disney girls vibe. That kind of choir thing in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the 1937 animated musical fantasy film. I like the sound of those female voices.”

What you can hear on this record is an artist being a bit more comfortable in his own skin, writing and recording on his own. “Yeah. It’s such a different thing to being in a band. It takes a bit of getting used to. I’m still learning being a solo artist. The song ‘Buffalo’ came along pretty early. I decided to finish it and put it out on a seven-inch while I was still recording the rest. Almost a bit of, hey guys, this is what I’m up to. What do you think? The response was so good: that gave me a lot of confidence. I was really getting a buzz when people were saying that they didn’t think it was me.”

With his increased self-confidence, Coombes is now prepared to open his heart more. Although he is a happily married husband and twice a father, he has his worries. “We all have shit to deal with, there’s nothing new about that. But I guess I’ve learned to nurture the strength. There’s been many moments in my life that have been very hard. I was 27 when my mother died. That definitely fucked my head up for a while. I feel OK about singing about those moments. Not in a cathartic way. I guess it’s a release, but it’s not vital. It’s just the only way I can convey some of this stuff, because I’m not as good at talking about it.”

“The last couple of years I think I’ve learned not to be afraid to be honest, to say that you fell apart, that you lost it. And to say that I got it back, because of my wife, or my children, or my love for music. I don’t just point out the bad times. There’s a lot of love on this record. I wanted to get that across. And how beautiful and precious simple moments are. You need them to fight the darkness. I’m a bit of a thinker, things get to me easily. But life is good, man, life is good.”

Coombes takes a look at the rear-view mirror, without getting nostalgic. In “Detroit”, for example, a song about “panic in your heart”, about “the poison, the powder and the lies”. “That story is set to a backdrop of an early tour through the States with Supergrass. It was a bad day, we were doing too many drugs, and a little bit of paranoia came in – but the song is not about that. It led to me phoning home and saying, I need to come home. My girlfriend stayed on the phone and talked me through it. She recalibrated my head and we carried on. Looking back, I thought that was really beautiful. Isn’t it amazing how one person can pull someone else from the fire? You pick it up again and move forward. You dodge out of the way of that stampeding bull that’s heading towards you.”

Like a matador, Coombes parries the doubts and the worries. “There’s a button I’ve got my finger on,” he sings. So does he still need an escape route? “That’s a self-destruct button. [Laughs] Now and again I push it. Then I don’t look after myself, drink a lot, don’t sleep enough. You just go and switch off. Luckily I have people around me to keep it together. That’s what this record is about, the importance of other people in your life. And being thankful for that.”

Gaz Coombes • 17/2, 19.30, €15/18, Botanique, Koningsstraat 236 rue Royale, Sint-Joost-ten-Node/Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 02-218.37.32, www.botanique.be