the word reissues review
Posted: 10 May 2011, 21:13
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/reviews/suede
SUEDE: Suede/Dog Man Star/Coming Up/Head Music/A New Morning
Posted by Eamonn_Forde on 10 May 2011 - 11:37am.
The revival started last year when Suede Mark II reformed for what was intended to be a one-off charity show for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Albert Hall. For the obsessed, these reissues (two CDs and a DVD per album!) are like The Beatles’ Anthology and Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series rolled into a glittering whole. For doubters or the uninitiated, here, laid bare, is why Suede, for a while, mattered so very much.
If we’re being crude, Suede can be split into three distinct eras: the Amazing Bernard Butler Years (Suede, Dog Man Star); the Amazing Richard Oakes Years (Coming Up); the Boring Years (Head Music, A New Morning).
While they had the big hit singles (Animal Nitrate, So Young), their richest and most rewarding music lay on B-sides (a casualty of the download market) and album track pulse-stoppers like To The Birds, He’s Dead and Pantomime Horse.
First, a potted history. Suede formed in 1989 but were looking for a purpose, as demonstrated here by scrapped debut single Be My God/Art and early song Just A Girl – where Brett Anderson and then-member and then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann go all Dylan/Baez.
Then Frischmann leaves to eventually form Elastica and it all clicks between Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler. Overnight, they become a polymorphous glam-rock Smiths and, with arch rivals Blur whose singer Frischmann was by now dating, accidentally invent Britpop. Melody Maker declares them “the best new band in Britain” before The Drowners (their actual debut single) is released in May ’92. So there is hysteria, a debut album that becomes the fastest selling in UK chart history at the time, cubic acres of frenzied press coverage and a second album that is so gloriously overblown and tortured that, in its making, Butler leaves.
Then, and this is where it gets really stupid, the band recruit a 17-year-old guitarist (Richard Oakes) and record their biggest album (Coming Up). But their sex-rock pudding gets both overegged and watered down and the band, once so vital, sink into increasing irrelevance across their final two albums. The lyrical motifs – cities, nuclear skies, pigs, chemicals – quickly ran out of rail and towards the end they stormed the barricades of self-parody.
In an ideal parallel universe, Suede would release a triptych of albums, ridiculously astounding B-sides and that would be it. Perfect. Yet life – and the cast of trashy misfits they sang about, awash on a sea of failed ambition – is never perfect.
Unearthed gems from The Butler Years include the previously unheard instrumental Diesel (Neil Young with a prog rash), a 13-minute version of The Asphalt World (not the 20-minute version of myth) and an alternative version of The Wild Ones with an ending that sounds like it was forced through Stay Together, the standalone and beautifully overblown nine-minute single the band has since had a very uneasy relationship with.
The DVDs have two shows from 1993, including the Love & Poison show from Brixton Academy that was previously only available on VHS (a format that carbon-dates their white-hot rise terribly), as well as an interview with Butler where he explains how the gothic, ghostly and gone Dog Man Star was an attempt to break apart everything they were previously hyped for. That involved him, too, breaking away.
For Coming Up, the band added Neil Codling on keyboards with his “Ron Mael death mask” stare, and it was conceived as their pop album and a Greatest Hits in all but name. With some songs (Trash, Lazy, Beautiful Ones – working title: Dead Leg) they came close, but Starcrazy and Filmstar were unwelcome cracks. It could have been a huge disaster, as the terrifying inclusion of a harmonica on the demo of Trash (working title: Pisspot) suggests.
Their last two albums had their fiery moments (He’s Gone, Everything Will Flow, Electricity) but wretched songs like Elephant Man and She’s In Fashion were proof that someone should have blown the whistle earlier. In the accompanying booklets, facial hair started appearing on band members. They swerved the harmonicas and yet fell foul of the beards. Beards, in case you were wondering, have no place in Suede. None.
Despite the dull ellipsis of their final two albums, I fell in love all over again. Harder this time.
SUEDE: Suede/Dog Man Star/Coming Up/Head Music/A New Morning
Posted by Eamonn_Forde on 10 May 2011 - 11:37am.
The revival started last year when Suede Mark II reformed for what was intended to be a one-off charity show for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Albert Hall. For the obsessed, these reissues (two CDs and a DVD per album!) are like The Beatles’ Anthology and Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series rolled into a glittering whole. For doubters or the uninitiated, here, laid bare, is why Suede, for a while, mattered so very much.
If we’re being crude, Suede can be split into three distinct eras: the Amazing Bernard Butler Years (Suede, Dog Man Star); the Amazing Richard Oakes Years (Coming Up); the Boring Years (Head Music, A New Morning).
While they had the big hit singles (Animal Nitrate, So Young), their richest and most rewarding music lay on B-sides (a casualty of the download market) and album track pulse-stoppers like To The Birds, He’s Dead and Pantomime Horse.
First, a potted history. Suede formed in 1989 but were looking for a purpose, as demonstrated here by scrapped debut single Be My God/Art and early song Just A Girl – where Brett Anderson and then-member and then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann go all Dylan/Baez.
Then Frischmann leaves to eventually form Elastica and it all clicks between Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler. Overnight, they become a polymorphous glam-rock Smiths and, with arch rivals Blur whose singer Frischmann was by now dating, accidentally invent Britpop. Melody Maker declares them “the best new band in Britain” before The Drowners (their actual debut single) is released in May ’92. So there is hysteria, a debut album that becomes the fastest selling in UK chart history at the time, cubic acres of frenzied press coverage and a second album that is so gloriously overblown and tortured that, in its making, Butler leaves.
Then, and this is where it gets really stupid, the band recruit a 17-year-old guitarist (Richard Oakes) and record their biggest album (Coming Up). But their sex-rock pudding gets both overegged and watered down and the band, once so vital, sink into increasing irrelevance across their final two albums. The lyrical motifs – cities, nuclear skies, pigs, chemicals – quickly ran out of rail and towards the end they stormed the barricades of self-parody.
In an ideal parallel universe, Suede would release a triptych of albums, ridiculously astounding B-sides and that would be it. Perfect. Yet life – and the cast of trashy misfits they sang about, awash on a sea of failed ambition – is never perfect.
Unearthed gems from The Butler Years include the previously unheard instrumental Diesel (Neil Young with a prog rash), a 13-minute version of The Asphalt World (not the 20-minute version of myth) and an alternative version of The Wild Ones with an ending that sounds like it was forced through Stay Together, the standalone and beautifully overblown nine-minute single the band has since had a very uneasy relationship with.
The DVDs have two shows from 1993, including the Love & Poison show from Brixton Academy that was previously only available on VHS (a format that carbon-dates their white-hot rise terribly), as well as an interview with Butler where he explains how the gothic, ghostly and gone Dog Man Star was an attempt to break apart everything they were previously hyped for. That involved him, too, breaking away.
For Coming Up, the band added Neil Codling on keyboards with his “Ron Mael death mask” stare, and it was conceived as their pop album and a Greatest Hits in all but name. With some songs (Trash, Lazy, Beautiful Ones – working title: Dead Leg) they came close, but Starcrazy and Filmstar were unwelcome cracks. It could have been a huge disaster, as the terrifying inclusion of a harmonica on the demo of Trash (working title: Pisspot) suggests.
Their last two albums had their fiery moments (He’s Gone, Everything Will Flow, Electricity) but wretched songs like Elephant Man and She’s In Fashion were proof that someone should have blown the whistle earlier. In the accompanying booklets, facial hair started appearing on band members. They swerved the harmonicas and yet fell foul of the beards. Beards, in case you were wondering, have no place in Suede. None.
Despite the dull ellipsis of their final two albums, I fell in love all over again. Harder this time.
Even the initial good stuff about CU is interspersed with jibes about Starcrazy and Filmstar 
and how poor the demos sounded - and basically not a good word AT ALL to be said about HM and ANM - despite the fact that most would agree the albums weren't the band in their very best moment they still deserve a little more credit - HM is generally speaking an excellent album, often better sounding live than on record, with a host of extremely good songs to match much of CU - in fact as i've said on several occasions often these days HM is the Suede album I turn to to listen to more regularly than others - the first 3 were magnificent, we know that but HM only had minor flaws and ANM, while not a great album, is still very good, a few standout tracks and still very listenable... Fuck the critics - maybe Suede aimed so high on the first 3 that even though the last couple of albums didn't reach quite the same heights to some it seemed like failure - but in my opinion those people ae very wrong - HM and ANM were still stronger releases than most of the other albums coming out at the times - let's not forget that Melody Maker voted HM their number one album of 1999 in the review of that year!!!!... People have short memories - especially since even with something like ANM I seem to remember that getting 7/10 in NME and 3/5 in Q magazine!!!... The critics are pricks!!!... But I have a horrible feeling the tone of most forthcoming reviews regarding these re-issues will be the same!!!! 
