Oxfordshire cabin, first solo Top 10
On 13 January 2023, Gaz Coombes released Turn The Car Around, his fourth solo album, on Hot Fruit Recordings / Virgin Music. He wrote and tracked much of it in his Oxfordshire outhouse studio known as The Cabin, with further work at Courtyard Studio in Sutton Courtenay. Ian Davenport co-produced. Guests include Willie J Healey and Ride drummer Loz Colbert; live-band regulars and the vocal trio The Roxys thicken choruses without turning the record into a band reunion album.
Nine songs, about 38 minutes. Overnight Trains and Don’t Say It’s Over open with patient grooves and cinematic guitar; Feel Loop (Lizard Dream) adds a gnarled riff; Long Live the Strange leans glam; Sonny the Strong and Dance On close with measured drama. After Supergrass reunion dates, the title reads as a turn back toward solo writing rather than nostalgia. Coombes called it a record of feeling about modern ups and downs, finishing themes he had started on Matador and World’s Strongest Man.
The cover shows Coombes on a studio floor with a white guitar among cables and amps – a working room, not a concept shoot. Advance tracks and an official video for Don’t Say It’s Over framed the campaign.
Turn The Car Around is a record that I’ve been building up to for the last seven years. It’s a record of feeling, an album that captures the ups and downs of modern life and all the small print in between.
(Gaz Coombes, album announcement, 2022)
The album peaked at No.6 on the UK Albums Chart, Coombes’s first Top 10 as a solo artist. That chart fact, plus the Cabin/Courtyard credit list, is the concrete close: a 2023 Hot Fruit LP that proved the post-Supergrass solo run could still climb without chasing the old singles.
