In 1997, Oasis were about to kill of Britpop with their most bloated album. On the sidelines of that, Blur was looking to America for influences on Blur, the Super Furry Animals were deconstructing Beatles records on Radiator, Radiohead were redefining everything with OK Computer, and those imps from Oxford were fighting against all of this. In It For The Money, the second Supergrass album, found the lads rejecting the "Alright" joviality for something more complex, but still wonderfully smart.
In It For The Money, out this Friday in a series of superb reissues on various formats, was pegged as a darker Supergrass, but that's only because the world had loved the version of the group seen in the "Caught By The Fuzz" and "Mansize Rooster" videos so much. What we heard on album #2 seemed more dour ("Hollow Little Reign"), more introspective ("It's Not Me"), and even louder ("Richard III"). And yet, the release seemed an immediate classic, the difference between a band cranking out peppy singles and one which understood exactly had to structure and pace a full album. I mean, as much as I absolutely LOVED portions of I Should Coco, it always felt less consistent overall than In It For The Money, a record that worked perfectly for me from start to finish. And even by 1997, that was an increasingly rare thing to feel about a contemporary album.
Still, for all that talk then about In It For The Money being downbeat, there was real pep in "Sun Hits The Sky" and the rowdier still "Richard III". If the latter was their RAWK number, the former was the sound of their teenage stuff evolving into something just as joyous but only slightly more considered and mature. Disc 1 of this 3-CD set features the album sounding better than it's ever sounded, and one can easily still get lost in the contours of "Cheapskate", or the slow-build of "Going Out", or the resignation of "Late in the Day", singles all. And if there was something beautifully sad in some of these tracks, it found its peak in "It's Not Me", for my money one of the band's very best offerings. These cuts, and the rest of the album proper, are elegant yet punchy in spots, workmanlike but subtly impassioned.
On the second CD of this In It For The Money edition, we get lots of B-sides, demo versions, and rarities from the era. Interestingly, a few flips are not here (the band's run at "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others", for one, from the "Sun Hits The Sky" single). And what's also not here are a few numbers from the bonus CD that came with many editions of this album in 1997 both here and in the U.K. So, "Sex" isn't here, nor the morose-but-beautiful "Wait for the Sun", nor the funny "Odd?", though the surging "Nothing More's Going To Get In My Way" is here. But judged by what is here, this second CD of In It For The Money works superbly at showing how the band fleshed out concepts, and generally functioned as a musical unit. The demos are particularly useful for fans in understanding all this. An early version of "It's Not Me", for example, is especially charming. And, for those of you who may have rightfully missed it since it was attached to a shitty film in the era, "We Still Need More (Than Anyone Can Give)" from the Dead Man on Campus soundtrack rules this second CD. Hell, this song is so good that if this was one of the only things Supergrass ever recorded, I'd still be an obsessive fan.
The third CD of this edition of In It For The Money is live sets, with special real estate on the disc given to a concert in Nottingham from 1998. The selections, particularly a cover of "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, illustrate the power of this group in a live setting. While Rob Coombes wasn't pictured on the cover of In It for the Money, his contributions seem significant. A run at "Going Out" included here is an aborted one due to his organ amp going out of commission. In the course of that Nottingham set, the band perform it eventually, along with the obvious crowd-pleasers like "Sun Hits The Sky" and earlier singles like "Caught By The Fuzz" from just a few years before.
Gaz Coombes, Mick Quinn, and Danny Goffey were livelier at their peak as Supergrass than any number of Cool Britannia trendies, weaving their facility with pop inspired by The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who, and ELO into something uniquely rich and complex. Rarely did anything in indie seem as well-constructed and precise as "Cheapskate", or as touching and direct as "It's Not Me" in 1997. It's perhaps unfortunate that the album came out when it did, a year where the excesses both good and bad of the form were celebrated and castigated. With all the critics rushing to praise OK Computer, and bury Be Here Now, there seemed then little time for Supergrass. Sure, the record spawned modest hits, and good reviews, but by all rights In It For The Money should have made this band huge. Still, for those of us then who loved it immediately, it was never a "difficult second album", or anything like that. In It For The Money remains to me this band's absolute peak, when every piece of their attack served a purpose, where the hooks were huge but clever, and where the players earned a few more points for not only being charming performers, but superb composers and musicians.
More details on In It For The Money and Supergrass via the official website.
[Photo: Capitol Records/Creative Commons]