Suede - "Suede" Vinyl, Reissue, Album, 2014/1993 (Demon Records)

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.  

Rain Tree Crow (Japan) - "Blackwater" b/w "Red Earth" & "I Drink to Forget" Vinyl 12" 45 rpm, Limited Edition, 1991 (Virgin)

For whatever reasons, the band Japan decided to regroup to make an album under the name of Rain Tree Crow.   David Sylvian, Mick Karn, Steven Jansen, and Richard Barbieri co-wrote all the music, but Sylvian dominated the lyrics.   I have the album on CD, but I just recently found a copy of a limited edition 12" of one of the songs that are on the album, "Blackwater." 

Without a doubt, it is one of the most beautiful recordings from Sylvian and company with an elegant melody played with great sensitivity by all above, including guest guitarist Bill Nelson.  It's ironic that this song is hidden in the Rain Tree Crow project, even though it is on a Sylvian compilation, it really needs full attention from Japan fans and elsewhere.  Whatever it is tensioned between Sylvian and Karn that caused the unit to break up, they clearly work well together, with respect to the results of their recordings.   Both have an interest in Eastern music or melodies, and it's borderline tragic that they didn't stick it out to make further albums.  The Sylvian and Karn solo recordings are good, but I often listen to a Sylvian solo release and think "where's Karn's fretless bass?"  Still, perhaps it wasn't meant to be.  At least Japan has made three excellent albums and Rain Tree Crow is very good as well.  Although it's a mystery to me why they didn't go under the name of Japan. Legal reasons?   It's a stupid name for a band, and maybe they wanted a fresh start.  Nevertheless, "Blackwater" is a great record.  

Suede - "Coming Up" Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, 2014/1996 (Demon Records)

For two decades I had a mental block regarding the British band Suede.   I liked bits and pieces of their songs, but for some odd reason, I had a problem with their image.  All of it seemed borrowed from better sources.  Musically it had traces of Bowie/Bolan glam, but with Roxy Music imagery, due that they used the same visual people as Ferry & company, and when one is approached by this post-modern aspect of Suede, is it important?   On the plus side, I do like Brett Anderson's mannerist vocals as well as Bernard Butler's (and of course Richard Oakes') guitar sound.  Over time, I always found a song here and there, for instance, "Trash."   Again, when I hear that title I immediately think of the New York Dolls' "Trash," which of course within a few years later, Roxy Music came out with their song "Trash."  It's a good title, but surely Suede could have come up with a more original title?  Then again, I don't think Suede is really about originality.   That is actually their charm.

Suede's "Trash" is a fantastic chorus.  As I sit here writing this sentence, I want to get a lighter and wave it above my head.   It's a manifesto set to a melody, and that is something that Suede can do very well.  "Filmstar" is the ultimate glam beat, with again a glorious chorus.  In fact, their third album (and first with guitarist Oakes, as co-songwriter as well) is extremely catchy.  It took me 20 years, but I now appreciate Suede.   Anderson struck me as a writer focusing on the darker aspect of British living, and a guy who read too much JG Ballard, but that's me just being overly critical.  He's actually a very good observer type of lyricist.  An incredibly handsome man, with a good-looking band behind him, Suede is in its essence, a classic pop band that looks behind them as the past's projection, but also re-wiring the Bowie/T-Rex catalog for perhaps their generation.  

Blur and Pulp are the superior bands as album makers and songwriters, still, Suede has a strong presence between those two bands.  Both Pulp/Blur flirt with electronica and glam, but Suede brings a sense of glamour to the over-all British package.    It's like making a map and making sure all the routes are in place, and Suede very much needs to be on that map.  I'm not sure if they are a great band, but their love of the decadent imagery of the glam era, but done in their own fashion, is an important aesthetic.  There is a tad touch of The Smiths, with respect to their attention to the seedy-eyed imagery of the 1970s, but filtered through the 1990s Soho or East London world.  I'm very much interested in reading Anderson's memoir, that just came out in the U.K.  I suspect that it's a good read.  So now, Suede didn't change, but I changed.  I'm happy to be in their world.