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Albums Of The Week: Gaz Coombes | Turn The Car Around

The Supergrasser takes a leisurely cruise through a pop-rock world on his enjoyable fourth solo album. Sure, it's mellower than his day job — but it's still worth the trip.

THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE:Turn The Car Around is a record that I’ve been building up to for the last seven years,” says Gaz Coombes. He has spent his time well — and emerged with a record of feeling, an album that captures the ups and downs of modern life and all the small print in between.

Written and recorded by Coombes in his gloriously ramshackle Oxfordshire outhouse Studio, Turn The Car Around stands with the best work of his illustrious career. It’s an album that both taps into the sonic palettes and lyrical themes of its predecessors and marks the third and final part of a trilogy of records alongside 2015’s Mercury and Ivor Novello-nominated sophomore album Matador and 2018’s World’s Strongest Man.

At the same time it carves a bold new way forward for one of the U.K.’s most gifted and cherished singer-songwriters. “There’s a lot of subject matter in there that I’ve played with and maybe not managed to see through in the past. I’ve evolved and I feel like I’ve got better at what I do.”

Turn The Car Around features additional instrumentation from members of Gaz’s live band: Garo Nahoulakian, Nick Fowler and Piney Gir. The album also sees Coombes reuniting with his live vocal trio The Roxys (a nickname given to them by Nile Rodgers when they shared the bill at a Later With Jools appearance) to create a rich and nuanced sonic tapestry. Cameo performances appear courtesy of Willie J. Healey and Ride’s Loz Colbert, and Coombes shares co-production duties with long-term collaborator Ian Davenport.

As he celebrates 10 years of his lauded solo career since the release of his debut Here Come the Bombs, and riding a crest of the Supergrass reunion, the announcement of Turn The Car Around solidifies Coombes’ status as one of the U.K.’s most interesting, enduring and effortlessly classy artists.”