Sawmills grin that started it
On 15 May 1995, Supergrass released I Should Coco on Parlophone. Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn had cut the album at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall between February and August 1994 with producer Sam Williams, who had spotted them gigging around Oxford. The budget stayed small; Quinn later said the whole record cost less than the video for Alright. Parlophone still got a debut that became the label’s best-selling first album since the Beatles’ Please Please Me.
The singles tell the story in order. Caught by the Fuzz (October 1994) opened with a teenage arrest tale and a three-minute sprint. Mansize Rooster and the limited Lose It kept the pace high. Lenny arrived just before the album; then Alright, issued in July 1995, hit UK No.2 and locked the band into Britpop television forever. The album itself spent three weeks at UK No.1, went platinum at home, and passed a million copies worldwide. Rob Coombes was not yet a full member on the sleeve, but the live unit already sounded like four people arguing happily at once.
What you hear is speed with hooks. Drums sit upfront, guitars stay dry and bright, and Coombes’s vocal flips from sneer to grin without losing the melody. Sitting Up Straight, Strange Ones, and I’d Like to Know keep the punk-pop engine running; Sofa (of My Lethargy) and Time slow the tempo without soft-focus padding. Williams kept takes short. The Fisherman’s Arms down the road from Sawmills matters only as color: the band chased last orders, then went back to finish songs before the tape rolled out of money.
It took about three and a half months total recording time and cost less to make than the video for Alright.
(Mick Quinn on I Should Coco)
Context mattered. Britpop was peaking, Oxford was feeding bands into the national press, and Parlophone needed a noisy young act that still wrote choruses. I Should Coco delivered both: street-level detail in the lyrics, radio-ready shapes in the singles. Later Supergrass records would darken and stretch; this one stays inside forty minutes and refuses to apologize for teenage velocity.
The lasting point is simple. Before the X-ray faces and the Hansa neon, Supergrass proved a cheap Cornwall session could top the UK chart and still sound like a band in a room. Alright made the posters; I Should Coco made the case that the rest of the album could keep up.
