After a two-year delay due to the COVID pandemic, anticipation for Supergrass‘ long-overdue Wiltern Theater show reached feverish heights.
No one told the almost 2,000-strong audience at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles that Supergrass were never as big in North America as they were in their native U.K. After an almost decade-long break-up and reformation in 2019, the excitement for the band’s singular-sounding exuberant pop/rock, which never really went away, is reignited. The group was scheduled to perform at a few stops Stateside in April 2020, which, for obvious reasons had to be postponed. The upside to this was the heightened anticipation for this long-overdue Wiltern show. Considering how many other shows were happening in Los Angeles that evening, not the least of which was Paul McCartney’s “Got Back” tour at SoFi Stadium, the dedicated full house turnout for Supergrass was even more impressive. And, the group’s “not-so-secret” show at No Vacancy in Hollywood the night before took nothing away from the official Wiltern tour date, one of only three scheduled stops, the other two being at Brooklyn Steel and Webster Hall. Ironically, Supergrass signaled their entrance with “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” They kicked off with the title track from their second album, the slow-building “In It for the Money.” Vocalist/guitarist Gaz Coombes’ voice rang through clear and flawless, no sign of atrophy from the quarter century that has passed since the release of that album. Fast forward to 2008 with the punchy “Diamond Hoo Ha Man,” then back to the late ‘90s with the twisted nursery rhyme that is “Mary” and the multi-tempoed “Moving” from their self-titled album third album.
