London Suede - Suede

Spelling the end of Happy Mondays laddishness, Suede were a southern Smiths transported back to the era of Ziggy Stardust. Their songs were vignettes of sad suburban dreamers, set to chords that came straight from the David Bowie songbook. Singer Brett Anderson exhumed Bowie's feyest Anthony Newley voice, while guitarist Bernard Butler took a major leaf out of the Johnny Marr simultaneous-lead-and-rhythm book, underpinning Anderson's wan languor with a gritty verve. "The Drowners" was a glam classic, and "Metal Mickey" as poutingly punky as any of the great T. Rex singles. --Barney Hoskyns Amazon.com

Easily one of the ten greatest albums of the nineties

Nearly fifteen years after its release, Suede's eponymous first album remains as lushly gorgeous as ever, perhaps because even at the time of its release it seemed to be looking back to the glam rock of the seventies and the best of the Smiths in the eighties. Today the music seems hardly to have aged at all. Although Suede made several albums, they were at their best only in their first two albums, during which singer/lyricist Brett Anderson teamed with guitarist/writer Bernard Butler teamed to write some of the most spectacularly theatrical songs to emerge from the decade. After SUEDE and the almost equally superb second album DOG STAR MAN (named after a series of avant-garde short films by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage) Butler left the band.

It is tragic that Anderson and Butler couldn't have remained collegial longer. As a team they perfectly complimented one another. Anderson sold the songs with such passion and sensuality that could perhaps be matched only by Jarvis Cocker during the same period. Though they recorded in the wake of punk, Anderson sounded as if he could have fronted any of the great glam bands of the seventies. As for Butler, did Great Britain produce a greater guitarist in the entire decade? Or even in the decade that followed? Stylistically he always reminded me of someone who listened to a lot of Dave Gilmour before discovering Johnny Marr. The heart of his playing owes a lot to Marr, but the edges are softer and darker, like Gilmour. Though SUEDE and DOG STAR MAN are not often thought of as great guitar albums, they in fact contain some of the most brilliant playing of the last twenty years.

Though the Anderson-Butler version of Suede stayed together only a while, they left us with a string of utterly stunning singles. "So Young," "Animal Nitrate," "The Drowners" (which was a massive hit), "Sleeping Pills," and "Metal Mickey" are all songs that are simply perfect. Though not the most celebrated cut on the album, my favorite Suede song might be "Pantomime Horse," which combines some of Anderson's most passionate singing with some of Butler's most astonishing playing to produce an epic masterpiece.

Anyone who loves music needs this album. I recently was talking to a huge Radiohead fan who incredibly had never heard this album. It is hard to realize if you have been following music for more than a couple of decades how quickly albums move from being "contemporary" to being "classics." But regardless of the label, this is an album anyone not knowing it really needs to own. It is one of the essentials. April 1, 2007

the emperor's new clothes

it's all in the interest of personal development; yours truly is currently going through a 'face your demons' phase. this is where you beg steal or borrow (but never, EVER buy) albums by people you count musically as villians, be it the type of 'artist' who inspires the type of po-faced reverance that makes an iconoclast like me's fists itch (dylan et al) or bands that were launched in a blaze of hype, championed by the music press to the detriment of other more worthy bands, a la suede.
assuming that most people reading this are american, you can count yourselves lucky that unless you pored over the nme and the now defunct (yay!) melody maker that you missed said wave of hype. said that, i'm sure you see it happening with other bands even now.
so what of it now. well, like so many others in this demon slaying, it turns out thati was right and suede...weren't very good at all. to whit, a lead singer who sounds like he's got a raw onion shoved up his rectum and a sub-glam sound. and that is that. oh there are one or two interesting moments - 'drowners' starts off with a drum riff similar to simple minds 'boys from brazil' (i'll wait for the suede fans here to check their history, i'll be here a while - it's kinda like a tortoise and hare/ evolutionary curve thing) before descending into a morass of mediocrity. 'moving' is perhaps the only track worth saving - so that's one out of eleven? well done!
if people had seen this album on its release for what it was maybe they'd bugger off and leave us alone. instead the music press (bless their rotten little hearts) conspired to fool the general public into believing something special was going on. meanwhile, yours truly sat here saying "...erm, actually people...these guys suck". oh well.
once more: nothing to see here folks, don't believe the hype. December 20, 2006

Won't someone give me a gun?!

No,the gun is not for my brother.I'll need it personally, to shoot all the impeccably bred critics and alleged melomans,all the swine who never bothered to really listen to Suede.Yes,Bowie and the Smiths were the idols that Brett and Bernard worshipped,their perverse glamour had obviously poisoned those working class kids at a tender age and provided the impulse to revive guitar rock.However,I dont think that even Brett and Bernard have realised what they have actually done, because they remain blinded by the halos of their own teenage heroes.Apart from the homage and the obvious similarities, the early Suede stuff is way better than anything David and Moz have ever released.It'd be a hypocritical sacrilege to compare a shallow and trendy rock'n'roll record like Ziggy Stardust with the creativity and the energy of the Suede debut, not to mention the whiny and quite theatrical world of Morrissey's discreet homosexuality.Come on!The power,sincerity,the sensuality,the androgynous angst and the vulnerability of Anderson are much deeper and far more convincing,they haunt the triviality of daily life and create a new enchanting dimension out of it,a dimension in which the drugs,the sex,and even a thing like paracetamol have an almost esoteric meaning.
Next time you pop Suede in your cd player,just try to distance yourself of all the background, all the casual crap that you've been fed to by the press and the media.Try to feel it and forget those retarded pop dinosaurs.This is the delight of the chemical smile... October 16, 2006

Remarkable beginning, forgettable finish

By the time you hit song five "Pantomime Horse" you will be starting to wonder how this band did not go on to be a major international act. With the impossible styling of the lead singer and the wailing lead breaks of the guitar broken by sudden fragile piano runs it is not possible to listen unemotionally to this album.

That is until song six. Just as you are settling down for a good listen - no, a great listen - the band ease off the unpredictable breaks and you get a murky, sodden wall of noise with few highlights.

Buy it for the opening set of five. They've got more punch than most albums collectively. But forget the rest. October 6, 2006

it moved my life in a new direction

two or three months after i got home from a two-year stint a friend of mine played me 'the drowners.' i remember sitting in the car absolutely dumbfounded and befuddled by what i was hearing. the only other time i'd had such an experience was the first time i heard 'the queen is dead.'

much is made of brett anderson's voice. before a decade of cigs and booze reduced it to a shell of its former self, brett's voice was a marvel--undeniably sexy, grand, lush, grandiose, operatic, cinematic and yeah, a pinch nasally. add that to his undeniable good looks and he was the first hero of an about-to-be-revitalized britpop invasion (no, it didn't start with blur or oasis or radiohead--suede were the harbingers). he was, perhaps, the first vocalist in a long while to get the girls AND boys whipped up in a frenzy. brett tackled tough themes and exposed the dark side of the pysche.

bernard was, too, either brett's perfect foil or ideal accomplice. always underappreciated when it comes to the decades great axemen, bernard butler is a virtuoso. contrary to many of his comtemporaries and 99% of today's guitarists, bernard never simply strummed. his riffs were melodic and functioned much as a backing vocalist would. it gave the music an unprecedented depth and uniqueness, something that graham coxon would later employ in blur, at least to some extent (i met his once at virgin megastore--his hands are HUGE).

the album does have a 'slapped-together' feeling to it. this, no doubt, comes from the fact that in the beginning suede was very much a singles band, just as franz ferdinand is now. that looseness, however, gives the album its danger and excitement. concept albums be damned--'suede' was about the three-minute, fist-in-the air anthem--a three-minute high that echoed one of the album's dirty druggie undertones.

the album's singles, 'the drowners,' 'metal mickey,' 'animal nitrate,' and 'so young,' are benchmarks of the britpop era. add to the album another dozen or so b-sides (most notably 'to the birds' and 'my insatiable one) that were better than most other bands 'A' material, and you had a band that was everything a great band should be. mat osman and simon gilbert don't often receive their proper credit, but they are both fantastic musicians. any great band needs a great rhythm section to let the more flamboyant guitarists and vocalists do their thing and mat and simon, in this regard, though in the background, were vital ingredients in the suede army.

'suede' was a lift-altering experience for this listener and even when i listen to the album these days (and as i'm doing now), it reminds me of a different time and a different place--a time when a band was truly unpredictable and never failed to surprise me. August 15, 2006

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