Supergrass

In It For The Money
Parlophone, 1997

In the middle of the 1990s, as the singles war between Blur and Oasis was heating up, Supergrass crashed the Britpop party like someone's kid brother outraged at not having been invited. Compared to the big boys, they were loud, silly and quite incredibly ugly and surprised more than a few people by wowing both NME and Melody Maker with a simple punk-pop song about being thrown into lock-up while still buzzing from a drug hit.

But how to follow such a great entrance? Dressing up as homeless people and naming their second album In It For The Money seemed to do the trick. Their first record, I Should Coco, was pretty straightforward pop, inspired by two of the more melodic first-wave punk groups, Buzzcocks and The Jam. The second time around, the three-piece got a bit more creative and messed about with horns and psychedelic pop influences.

The introduction is the three of them, on the cover, dressed in second-hand winter coats and those stupid hats with the ear flaps, playing their instruments – one of which is a trashcan – on a street corner in some town that could only be called Shitsville, chanting "we're in it for the money, we're in it for the money" on the opening track. After that the song breaks open into a sort of hallucinatory driving anthem. "I got my mind made up!/ I got my finger on the button!/ Got the sun turned down!," Gaz Coombes rants as a brass section booms and the band play like they're on the highway to drug-induced psychosis.

Most of the other tracks on the first half of the record are the normal pop song stuff – hey, let's go to a party and do fun shit! – but towards the end they get more interesting. On the final trio, the tempo slows down and the band start getting weird. Coombes opens the medley with a sad, surreal few lines about his new-found fame: "If you like me, you can buy me and take me home/ When you see me on the TV I'm alone." The closer, 'Sometimes I Make You Sad', sounds like a demented, late-night carnival rhyme.