http://www.todayonline.com/Entertainmen ... sily-Suede
To be easily Suede
The Brit rockers are back with remastered re-releases - and, yes, they'll be popping by Singapore again
by Christopher Toh 04:46 AM May 17, 2011THERE'S nothing quite like a band reunion to get fans high on a happy vibe. But, of course, for every successful get-together like Take That or Crowded House, there have been others that are better left unsung. Just ask The Verve.
So when the guys of Suede - singer Brett Anderson, bassist Mat Osman, drummer Simon Gilbert, guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist/guitarist Neil Codling - were asked to get back to do a show at the Royal Albert Hall last year, there was, naturally, some trepidation.
Then again, it was for the Teenage Cancer Trust helmed by The Who's Roger Daltrey - and what sort of rock star says no to teenage cancer?
"We thought, 'Okay, we'll do this', because if it was a disaster, at least the one final thing we did was for a good cause in a venue that we loved and we could kind of slink away with our head held high," Osman said over the phone from his home in northwest London.
"We're lucky in the sense that we didn't fall out," he continued. "It wasn't a big emotional thing to be in a room together. We just didn't know whether we would sound good or not, to be honest. But we got into a rehearsal room and we played Filmstar, I think. And everything - the years just slipped away."
As it turned out, the whole experience was rather "magical" for the band.
"(It was) a really, really magical, enjoyable gig. Before we got onstage, we were like, 'Are we going to do anything wrong?' ... But when we got onstage, it was like, 'We've got to do that again.'"
They did do it again, with gigs at London's O2 Arena, followed by a tour of the United Kingdom. They're now heading out to do festivals in Europe - and they'll be swinging by Asia sometime in late July.
To coincide with the touring, the band has released The Best Of Suede, a three-disc compilation of their hits, as well as B-sides, album tracks and rarities, along with a DVD featuring an interview with Anderson. This album is also a harbinger of things to come in the next month or so: Fully remastered re-releases of all their five albums - Suede, Dog Man Star, Coming Up, Head Music, A New Morning - as well as a whole load of demos, outtakes, live shows, including one recorded at MediaCorp. Warts and all, as they say.
"There's stuff that, you know, you kind of do very quickly and then discard. Some of them were very charming, some of them were very, very rough around the edges," he said.
"There's a really early track that I remember we were writing when I must have been 18 or 19 - a demo that we did with Justine (Frischmann of Elastica, who founded the band with her then-boyfriend Anderson), and it sounds like something by Peter, Paul and Mary or Joan Baez. I'm quite surprised it's on there. It's very sweet, very charming, but it's quite un-Suede-like, if you can imagine."
Breaking up isn't hard to do
Indeed, it was only when Frischmann left after breaking up with Anderson that Suede - Anderson, Osman, Gilbert and guitarist Bernard Butler - finally found their voice. In 1993, their self-titled debut appeared at No 1 in the British charts, and critics compared their music to The Smiths and David Bowie, with "catchy, crunching glam hooks" and "self-consciously poetic lyrics", calling the band "compelling, confounding, irritating".
But the following year, the band faced the "difficult second album syndrome", Dog Man Star. While recording this highly experimental and dark offering, Butler and Anderson were at loggerheads as to how the band ought to go on. "Dog Man Star was recorded, literally, with us fighting and not getting on in the studio," recalled Osman. "People were working in shifts ... I think it's a very British thing that we're not good with emotions and saying what we mean and those emotions were thrown into the songs. And it shows on that record - us brawling and heartbreaking and joyful on occasion."
In the end Butler quit the band, leading the British press to announce that his departure was the death knell for Suede. But then they roped in teenager Oakes and Gilbert's cousin, Codling, and in 1996 came up with one of their poppiest records ever, Coming Up.
Filled with iridescent riffs and simplistic choruses on songs like Beautiful Ones, Lazy, She and Saturday Night, the album, almost unexpectedly, shot to No 1.
Said Osman: "All around us, people were saying we'd lost one of the best songwriters, blah, blah, blah. (And then) we recruited a 17-year-old who'd never been in a band. But we've always gone with our gut and we've always felt that we could have our revenge. And I could remember just after recording (Coming Up), and we were listening back, me and Brett, and just thinking, 'No one is ready for this - it's going to be great'.
"Everyone was expecting a slightly worse version of Dog Man Star. And we had set out to write the opposite: A big pop record. I remember thinking, 'I cannot wait.'"
However, it turned out the monumental success of that album couldn't sustain the band forever. While the 1999 follow-up Head Music was well-received, the band was running out of steam.
Their record label folded, Codling left citing fatigue, and their fifth effort, A New Morning (2002) was a commercial flop. Just over a year later, Suede broke up.
"One of the reasons that we split up, I think, was because it'd all become very ordinary, almost like a day job," said Osman. "That's a tragic thing. I was very sad we reached that stage."
One more for the road
What bodes for born-again Suede? "We're working very hard to (put out) something that we'll care about, that the audience will care about," said Osman. "We're not intending to go on for two years of touring. We're going to a lot of places that we haven't been to in 10 years. It's a feeling that you're doing something that matters to people. And people care about."
"We never ever took the easy path. I know I said that it's good for the music, but sometimes I look at other bands and think, 'That's so straightforward.' They get together, they find a nice formula and release 10 records, and each one sounds slightly more modern than the last one - and that's their life.
"For Suede ... We lurch from crisis to crisis. Every time. Although I think it's made us the band we are. It's psychologically quite tiring, I must say."
Still, as a member of the band that's been noted for kick-starting the Brit pop phenomenon, Osman said he hoped Suede would continue to "touch people's lives".
"I think we kind of made it such that you could be a mainstream band, a pop band, but still have something meaningful to say," he said. "My favourite moments are when I get stopped in the street by someone who says 'I got married to The Wild Ones' or 'I had a first kiss to that song'. The idea that the things that you write in a sweaty rehearsal studio are tied into the fabric of people's lives - I love that.
"You know, music is supposed to be more than just background noise."
And yes, fans can get a chance to hear that non-background noise when the band pops into town. "We are definitely coming to Singapore," said Osman. "It's all booked in. We always had such a good time there.
"I remember going to Singapore for the first time and being told by everyone, 'Oh, you know it's really reserved sort of place. Everyone will be polite and just clap' - and it was madness, you know? A big sweaty mess. I've got very warm memories of those gigs."
The Best Of Suede is out in stores now.
new article in Singapore paper
Re: new article in Singapore paper
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Re: new article in Singapore paper
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Re: new article in Singapore paper
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