Oxford, England, outfit Supergrass will release their fourth studio effort, Life on Other Planets on February 11th.

With the new release, frontman/guitarist Gaz Coombes, bassist Mick Quinn and drummer Danny Goffey have officially expanded into a quartet, swearing in touring keyboardist (and Gaz's sibling) Rob Coombes as a full-time member.

"Gaz and Danny play a lot of piano on [Supergrass' debut] I Should Coco," Quinn says. "We needed to bring that into the Life album and we decided to bring in Rob. He's got one of those personalities where he doesn't want to step into the frame. [But] we felt that he was doing as much as we were, so we just thought, 'Well you might as well start doing the press on this record.' It seems like he appeared from nowhere, but he's been around all the time for us."

After finishing up touring behind their self-titled 1999 release, Supergrass converged at Gaz's home earlier this year to draft the dozen tracks that make up Life. "We went off to France and did a lot of messing about out there," Quinn says. "Basically just getting back to how we used to be when we first started the band. And we had a lot more time on our hands and it felt less like a job and more like something you used to enjoy. I think we found that again. We didn't do any formal recording. We just took mini-disc recorders, acoustic guitars and a few keyboards. So we basically sat around a fire drinking really nice wine and really nice food from Normandy and just sitting around playing guitar all night."

The album was polished off at Heliocentric Studios in England and Rockfield Studios in Wales with producer Tony Hoffer last spring.

Having recently completed a U.K. tour, Supergrass have lined up a short string of dates in New York and Los Angeles to coincide with the album's U.S. release. The band will be back stateside in March for a full-scale tour including a performance at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin.

Supergrass tour dates:

2/8: Brooklyn, Southpaw
2/10-11: New York, Bowery Ballroom
2/13: Los Angeles, Roxy Theatre
2/14: Los Angeles, Troubadour
2/15: Los Angeles, Spaceland

JOLIE LASH
(December 30, 2002)