Gaz Coombes
Album: Matador
Label: Hot Fruit
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.gazcoombes.com

Youthful exuberance is the lifeblood of pop music in all its many forms and let's all give thanks and praise for that. There's also a growing acceptance that without new saplings old roots music is going to suffer as well. Thus, young players are feted, rated and all too frequently segregated from the old guard whose ranks they can only aspire to join.

Things are changing just as slowly in the realm of indie rock. It's more than two decade since the weekly inkie music press went nuts for Supergrass and welcomed Caught By The Fuzz and particularly Alright as the new-born new wave of new wave, revelled in the old school Beatles-meets-Pistols tunesmithery and patted them on the head as Oasis went about becoming the biggest band in the world.

What happened next is that Supergrass matured as a band, wrote many much better songs, gave a leg up countless upstarts (not least The Libertines) that followed in their wake and hardly ever moaned about being upstaged, bypassed or overlooked because they had a mighty good run for the money.

By the time they finally ran out of steam singer Gaz Coombes was already taking his next steps, messing around with a covers outfit then making his own music on the reassuringly confident debut Here Come the Bombs and now Matador, his second solo outing.

This record deftly shoehorns so many stylistic influences into its 11 tracks it clearly casts its predecessor as a stepping stone from the overtly pop instincts of Supergrass to the more experimental energies on display here. In some ways it's closer to the feel of early Supergrass, not least because it actually was recorded at home and doesn't just sound like it was. He also plays nearly everything on the record and goes a long way to crafting a new musical identity with robust Neu! electronics propelling The English Rose, the cosmic balladry of The Girl Who Fell To Earth and the intimate setting of title track that's over way too soon.

Closer to type, Detroit fizzles with passion, guitars turned up; Buffalo throws torch song dramatics into the mix, 20/20 sounds like he's heard too many songs from Frozen of late and Seven Walls strips all the layers away as Coombes reminisces about early 90s Oxford.

There's a lot going on here, some might say too much at times - you've got years to play with all those ideas, Mr C - but somehow it's gratifying to find an artist who is willing to push the boundaries of what he thinks he and his audience are about. Take note, Gallagher Minor.

Nick Churchill www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk