As mentioned before on this blog, I have been avoiding Suede for 25 years. Usually, when I do something like that, it's for a good reason. I here now to admit I was wrong. They're a terrific band with solid songs. My problem with them is that they wear their influences quite loudly, and that got on my nerves. 25 years later I read lead singer Brett Anderson's rather remarkable childhood/teenage memoir which led me to re-listen to their catalog. I'm slowly buying up their albums on vinyl, and it's an exciting listening experience.
Suede's first album, simply called "Suede" is a homage to both Bowie and The Smiths. Bernard Butler, the co-writer as well as their guitarist, is a mixture of Mick Ronson and Johnny Marr. Incredibly skillful with the many-layered sounds of his strings, I'm often drawn to his playing over the music or anything else on this album. The music is sensual with a JG Ballard/Bowie lyrical stance of wasted young people on the verge of death or some sort of life on the boundaries of a world gone wrong. In other words, it's a romantic work. Mat Osman and Simon Gilbert are a terrific rhythm section, but it's really the presence of Butler and Anderson that is the first stage of Suede. Butler does remind me of Marr in a sense they are both music geeks. There is a formula at work, in that most of the songs reach the chorus dreamily with the phrasing and echo of Anderson's vocals.
Beside the Brit-Pop being full of good looking lads (and ladies), all the bands of that time don't sound the same. If I had a gun to my head, I could see traces of Pulp and Suede sharing a certain sensibility, but Jarvis Cocker is a much more realist at looking at his world. There is nothing romantic about Pulp which is a significant part of their appeal. Also, I believe they may have been slightly older, so therefore more experienced in the relationship department. Suede is very teenage angst, but also on a street level. I look back at those times and hear this album as something new to me.
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