Masters of the art of making years fall away, there are few bands better suited to welcoming back live music than Oxford’s eternal errant teens. With a brisk blast of I’d Like To Know and Mansize Rooster, both from their 1995 debut I Should Coco, Crystal Palace’s South Facing festival is transported back to carefree pre-plague days when the most we had to worry about was dental maintenance and working off cautions for minor drug offences. Though singer Gaz Coombes now sports the fedora of a Britpop mafiosi don, sonically Supergrass seem aged not a minute from their tearaway peak.
They were always, however, a more mature act than they were given credit for. While the hula punk Alright is beach-ready enough to make you feel like surfing across the stage-front lake, songs like Mary, Late In The Day and the knowing (particularly for a reunited band) In It For The Money were always cheeky, chirpy updates of the Stones, Bowie and The Kinks. They’re at their best when their inherent classicism froths to the surface: in the Zep riffs of Richard III, the psychedelic carousel pop of Going Out and the glam blams of Grace and Pumping On Your Stereo. An encore of Caught By The Fuzz and Strange Ones might bristle with 90s teenage thrills, spills and outsider exuberance but the ‘Grass have the heartbeat of ageless greats.