Growing up sucks

Supergrass’ appeal has always lain in their being the opposite of heady intellectual rockers. Since their ’90s Britpop days, they’ve established themselves as masters of music for hangin’ out and havin’ fun.

But their latest effort Diamond Hoo Ha sees them suffering that hard-to-avoid fate of bands who make their name playing music about being young and loving life: They've grown up and learned to play their instruments.

On Diamond Hoo Ha, the party beats and naive cleverness of Supergrass’ earlier albums have been replaced with guitar wankery and “youthful” lyrics that might have “shocked” someone in 1945. While they used to sound like ’60s rock ’n’ roll met glam in the ’90s, now they sound like they copped The Vines (who did a much better job copping them) and forgot it’s not the ’90s anymore.

The best song on the album is its opener “Diamond Hoo Ha Man.” It has one of Hoo Ha’s few memorable hooks, and, despite their lack of substance, gets its lyrics stuck in your head: “I’m gonna hot tail / To the motel” and “I got to get you in my suit case / It’s duty-free.”

But it’s only downhill from there.

The album is full of guitar solos, dragging “ooh”/ “aah” breaks, unmemorable lyrics about nothing in particular and songs that teeter on the edge of setting a mood but never quite do it. And despite its competent production, it comes off as sloppy.

Diamond Hoo Ha is certainly a listenable album, if nothing else. There’s little on it that’s outright irritating, but there’s also little worth coming back to. The group tries to recreate the energy it had when its members were in their late teens and 20s, but they come off instead as being out of touch and trying too hard.

Like the dated fade-out ending at the end of the album’s closer “Butterfly,” Supergrass must not have known when to stop.