Matador, January 2015: piano first, then the Oxfordshire engine kicks in
Piano hits first, bright and restless, before the guitars thicken and Gaz Coombes’s vocal rides a mid-tempo that refuses Britpop nostalgia. The English Ruse is track three on Matador, his second solo album, released 26 January 2015 on Hot Fruit Recordings via Caroline International. It sits between the single-ready 20/20 and the dreamier The Girl Who Fell to Earth, a place where the record shows its melodic muscle without sounding like Supergrass cosplay. From the first chorus you hear a frontman rebuilding a catalogue under his own name, and enjoying the freedom.
Coombes produced the album himself. Most of it was cut at his home studio in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, with spillover days at Courtyard Studios in Sutton Courtenay when cabin fever hit. Ride drummer Loz Colbert, Charly Coombes, and guitarist Nick Fowler appear across the record; Coombes still plays the bulk of the parts. The arrangement on The English Ruse keeps the piano figure clear, the drums dry enough to punch, and the vocal close to the mic. That galloping piano later became a shorthand for the album’s soulful AOR streak: not a pastiche of 1970s radio, but a live-feeling band take that leaves air around the keys.
Live, the song slotted into the February 2015 UK run that opened at Bristol Fleece and hit London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall early in the tour. It was never the flagship single (those were Buffalo, 20/20, Detroit), but on stage it gave Coombes a chance to stretch the piano hook into a full-band push. Streaming put the track on official uploads under his own channel, the album version without a separate video campaign. For listeners who only knew the Supergrass singles, this was the sound of the engine still running, with Courtyard air and home-studio grit in the same mix.
I’ve been blown away by the response. I know what I like the sound of and I know what excites me musically, but whether everyone else agrees with me is something I’m never sure of.
(Gaz Coombes on Matador, Oxford Mail, 2015)
Matador debuted at number 18 on the UK Albums Chart and earned a 2015 Mercury Prize nomination. That context matters for The English Ruse: it is album-track craft from a writer proving the solo project was not a side hobby. The lyric’s English irony sits under a melody that wants the chorus without begging for it. Put the song on again and the piano still announces the record’s confidence. Press play for that opening figure alone, then stay for how cleanly the guitars arrive without dragging the song back into 1990s Britpop pastiche.
