Mark Beaumont 

Superfood review – mashes together all of the best bits of Britpop

The 90s revivalists tug on a melodic thread that stretches from Blur right back to The Beatles, writes Mark Beaumont
  
  

Dom Ganderton of Superfood on stage at Truck Festival at Hill Farm on July 19
Dom Ganderton of Superfood. Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty Images Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty Images

Now that the 80s revival has dragged on longer than the original decade, it's surely time the 90s got a look in. "Blur '94!" sniggers a nearby Britpop vet as Birmingham's Superfood squeeze on to the stage, and he has a point. These hotly tipped peers of Peace boast a thrash-happy guitarist in Ryan Malcolm, and if singer Dom Ganderton doesn't share Damon Albarn's early urge to assault every speaker stack that dared stand in his way, he certainly has a similarly wobbly approach to suggesting modern life might leave something to be desired.

"I can never sleep without the TV on," he bawls on TV, a desperate treatise on youth's hardwired need for 24-hour connectivity that boasts a bassline so rumbling it literally brought the house down at the first of these four free London shows when the ceiling at Ladbroke Grove's KPH venue collapsed 90 seconds in.

Superfood are no hardened Parklifers though. TV actually mashes together all of the best bits of Britpop, from the Wire-indebted groove of Elastica's Line Up to the way Ganderton emulates Gaz from Supergrass's high-pitched teenage howling, as if petrified by puberty. New single Right on Satellite goes further, tugging on the thread of British melodicism that stretches from Blur, via the Stone Roses and Echo & the Bunnymen, right back to the Beatles' Daytripper. They're irreverent and playful with their influences, too: Mood Bomb gives Coffee & TV a Gallic frisson while Bug could be the lounge-funk band on a Britpop-themed Caribbean cruise.

"What's about to happen is a joke that's gone way too far," Dom chuckles as he aims a small foam machine at the front row for the Oasis-like Bubbles. The effect is more Matey than Manumission, but as he launches into Beck-style falsetto raps on their signature tune Superfood with his face plastered with froth, you can't help but hope this 90s revival lasts a century.

 

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