Mercury nominee Gaz keeping music fresh

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes plays a solo show in the Róisín Dubh on Thursday, December 3. Earlier this year, Gaz released his second solo album, Matador, which was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize. He does the interview two days before the ceremony – does he have his suit dry-cleaned?

“I might not wear a suit – I don’t want to want it too much,” he says.  “I’ve been doing gigs, so my head’s been elsewhere. Probably a good thing, rather than sitting at home ironing shirts and over thinking it all. But it should be a good night.”

Other nominees for the prize include Florence + The Machine and Wicklow native, and former Moloko lead-singer Róisín Murphy. The prize ultimately went to Benjamin Clementine. Who did Gaz fancy to win it in advance?

“It’s pretty wide open,” he says. “I don’t even know who the favourite is. It’s about celebrating a cool cross section of British music. It’s hard for me to pick one out.”

That out of the way, how has the tour for Matador been going?

“I’ve done four shows so far, just me, a guitar, a piano and some drum machine stuff and loops,” Gaz says. “It’s been really fun, looking at the songs in a different way. Very much what it was like when they were written.”

This album was recorded at Gaz’s home studio in Oxford, and recalls the out-there-ness of artists like David Bowie and The Beatles.

“Often I’d just start making sounds, and get a loop together and then start playing along to it. That’s how Buffalo started,” Gaz says.  “Or I might get a mad loop and start playing drums along to it. Just getting ideas, editing them and then getting them into a good shape. I would usually start with something musically, and then look at lyrical stuff.  A lyric will pop up out off the cuff and then I’ll build from that, and try to determine what the song’s about.”

One of the most impressive songs on the album is 20/20, where a quieter section segues into a soaring, almost gospel-choir vocal crescendo. Did it take long to put together?

“The vocals came together quite quickly,” Gaz says. “The beginning section was a later addition. The vocals were written quite quickly. It was a great moment when that track came together, I really felt that it had something strong, a real character.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune