Outside the Forum, Melbourne’s winter and the blue glow of the Rising Festival cast a slick sheen over the rain-soaked pavement. It’s cold and dark. Inside, under the aquamarine night sky of the Forum’s faux-ceiling, there’s warmth, buzz, and a growing sense of anticipation, helped along by booze and in some cases, definitely coke.

The year 2002 not only marks the year of the most recent song from the setlist of tonight’s headliners, Supergrass, but it was also the year that Rocket Science, their perfectly cast support band, were one of the shining lights of Melbourne’s rock scene. 

They open with a brace of dense, riff-driven songs that leave little room for dynamic shifts but plenty of space for frontman Roman Tucker’s Iggy Pop-style contortions. On record, these songs are arresting, but tonight – near the stage at least – the sound is a loud, muddy mess. 

Inspired by bands who made a virtue of their simplicity, the complexities of Rocket Science’s songs turn them into more of a sonic force than conventional music. When the band lets some space in, as in the theremin-led What’s Goin’ On and the lurching groove of Being Followed, they’re electric. There is probably a bar in Osaka themed on Rocket Science, and there should be. It would be a shame if this was their last show.

In town to play their breakthrough debut album I Should Coco on the 30th anniversary of its release, Supergrass bring an era as much as they bring music. Beginning, as they should, with side one track one, I’d Like to Know, the band lock into gear and remain a pristine machine for the next 90 minutes. Without a rest, mid-pogo, the band veer into Caught By the Fuzz, their first hit and Australia’s first introduction to them.

No other band of the mid-1990s filtered the experience of youth through guitar, bass, drums and harmonies like Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn. I Should Coco is filled with songs about being young outsiders in Oxford and visits to London, curious about “strange ones”, not fitting in, and running into authority figures when you try to. And yet, even in the mid 1990s, the stakes feel pretty low.

Today, the joy comes more from their evocation of pre-internet adolescence. Trouble and complexity come with later albums. For now, we drink, pogo and sing along to fizzy, near-perfect pop songs that let us be both the cool kids and the “strange ones”.

Augmented by Gaz’s brother Rob Coombes, keyboardist, arranger, and full-time member since 2002, the band has aged into something deceptively slick. Rob, nearly invisible at the back of the stage behind a wall of keys, is central to their sound.

The songs are played faithfully, and that faithfulness is rewarded by a crowd that meets their energy. The falsetto harmonies that cut through the fizzing urgency of these early songs sound softer and more distant now, but the audience more than makes up for it.

“So, we’re here to play I Should Coco,” says Gaz Coombes, grinning. “Here’s track four.” As soon as the piano intro to Alright lands, the floor lifts. For all its simplicity – “just a song about discovering girls and drinking,” Gaz once said – it’s become a generational anthem, handed down and still hollered by twenty-somethings who weren’t born when Clueless hit cinemas. The audience is more diverse than expected, and this song is a big reason why.

Lose It follows, then a version of Lenny that expertly toys with its introduction to turn it into a set highlight. Lenny is also a song that drummer Danny Goffey described as his favourite, “because it’s easy. Not like our other songs where you’re sweating it because you might make a mistake coz they’re all complex and stuff.”

Goffey introduces the later songs She’s So Loose as being “a song about underage sex with an older woman”, and We’re Not Supposed To as one written when they were “mucking around with Varispeed on a tape recorder, and a little acid.” He also reminds us that “it’s a long weekend for you lot, right? So, no rules.”

For the album’s final song, Time To Go, sees them bring out guitar technician Toby to play an acoustic guitar, while Mick and Gaz swap instruments. It’s a beautiful moment of calm before they move into the “hits” section of the show, introduced by Goffey: “I take it you want to hear some more, right? All right let’s go fucking mental.”

They oblige with Richard III and Late In The Day and it’s here that it becomes clear just what a songwriting powerhouse Gaz Coombes is, and why they’re much more than youthful nostalgia. Tracks from later albums, but not that much later – Grace, Moving, Sun Hits the Sky – retain the energy, but dig deeper.

The arrangements are tighter, the lyrics more often about “you” than “we”. The encore closes with a euphoric Pumping On Your Stereo so good that when the house light comes up and Bill Medley and Jenifer Warnes start singing, I’ve Had The Time Of My Life, the whole place joins in. Cheesy, but not an overstatement.