Suede

As for the "Head Music"/80s sounding question, I have listened to a part of the album yesterday (couldn't make it to the end !) and I still don't hear it.
What I might hear is something related to bands like Garbage, i.e a certain idea of "modernity" (electronic sounds, synths, drum loops...) for indie/alt bands in the mid 90s.
but it sure is a strange beast.

I don't really hear Garbage either... Head Music strikes me as being more sparse/"clean" sounding.

yeah sure it's not identical and I had also never thought of that comparison with bands like Garbage before but thinking about it now, there are some elements in common.
I'm pretty sure they didn't see it that way, anyway.
but their desire to sound more electronic/dancey/modern might have taken them it the same direction.

This sounds so 90s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJKPP13Tqi4

I can maybe hear 80s inspiration in "Savoir Faire" and "Hi-Fi" but I think from just listening it would be quite easy to guess when Head Music was made, especially a song like "Down" is textbook late 90s production (cf. William Orbit)

'Everything Will Flow' sounds '80s to me in its pristineness. I'll concede that the intro to 'Down' sounds a little like something William Orbit would have done in the late '90s, but then the approach that Orbit and the likes of AIR had at the time was retro in its own way. Incidentally, weren't Orbit's first records made in the '80s?

Anyhow, I'm sure you could pin down many '80s revivalist records released in the '10s as being released in the '10s. It doesn't prevent 'em from being '80s revivalist records.

I guess we just have different ideas of what constitutes 80s and 90s aesthetics

The drums and the lead guitar on "Everything Will Flow" both sound quintessentially 90s to my ears, and, well, the vocals just sound very Coming Up-era Suede, so for me, they're also p 90s sounding

The debut's amazing, I didn't really notice until now

It really is, though I recently tried giving Dog Man Star another shot, and its grandiosity grated on me more than ever (I couldn't make it past 'New Generation'). Anyway, the S/T is all the Suede I need—what an album.

What I like most about it is how it sort of sneaks by - for such a bold pop album it keeps its cards well hidden - that sense of mystery and disconnection is vital to its charm. I don't mean to say that the songs are cryptic in their intention, but the album doesn't make a grand fanfare of its intentions, just sort of slyly and elegantly saunters, ambiguous of mood and slightly above it all. And so it's grown on me with each listen, each attempt to reach quite what it's about. I'm not sure I'll ever quite crack it.

Really? For me, of all of their albums, the debut was the most immediate!

Like, a song such as Sleeping Pills can slip through your ears and you'll only realise a tiny bit too late that it was brilliant

Obviously, trying to calculate how good this album would have been with My Insatiable One, To The Birds and He's Dead all rightfully installed (but where? but where?) is a source of great and tantalising fondness

the verses on "sleeping pills" are so lovely but the chorus doesn't do it for me

"moving" is weak

the rest is fabulous

was "the big time" recorded after the first album? man that's a great tune.

Hmm. I don't think 'Moving' is weak, but it's definitely more of a "live" song. The version on the LP could have been much better, but I can't really complain that much about it.

'The Big Time' was one of the 'Animal Nitrate' B-sides... I think it was written and recorded after the sessions for Suede ... it's a great song, no doubt. The first disc of Sci-Fi Lullabies is my favourite Suede LP.

ah yeah, the debut is definitely the one I would keep if I had to choose.
It's not perfect at all (Moving, Animal Lover) but it made me fall for them when it was released and it was never really as strong after that (even DMS).
To this day I still find something very special in this album that I can't really define.
For all their obvious influences it doesn't really sound like Bowie, Smiths, etc. or anything else.
There's something very alien in the whole thing (structures, sounds/production, lyrics...) whereas the following records are more "classic".

I don't think 'Animal Lover' is a weak song at all - I think it's great and, contrary to what Brett himself thinks, I think the recording of it is fine too.

+1

Also the chorus of Sleeping Pills is amazing imo

I used to skip 'Moving' for years - the album version is muffled, Brett sounds like he's singing in a concrete corridor and there's this phasing effect on practically everything else. What ended up saving it for me was the lyrics ("stick like sick on the stars" especially).
I always liked 'Animal Lover' and particularly it's a great penultimate track - it's a perfect lead into 'The Next Life'.

i love that phasing effect, you're weird

snoball being weird is a well-established fact courtesy of the ilx comps (<3)

Probably an American thing, but I've always associated and compared this Suede album with Your Arsenal -- in that I got them around the same time. So for, geez, 20+ years, I've mentally allotted "The Next Life" as Suede's "version" of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday," to which it comes up short.

Yeah, I love that swooping sound in between the verses and choruses on 'Moving'!

Well, I like "Moving" and "Animal Lover" (and its deluge of guitar in the last part) but I just find them less brilliant than the rest of the album. More b-sideish (and not the greatest b-sides they had at the time).
And as for "Animal Lover" being a perfect lead into "The Next Life" it is good but "He's Dead" would have done that better, for instance.
And concerning the phasing effect, I love it and Butler used it A LOT at the time. It was the first pedal I bought due to that !

There's something very alien in the whole thing (structures, sounds/production, lyrics...) whereas the following records are more "classic".

I totally agree, even though "Coming Up" is a more polished version of the debut, the latter is brash and exhilarating in ways that their more controlled follow-up albums can't touch.

hey anti-Moving brigade, check these versions!

BBC session! (a year before the album)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHiQbp93rzg

Brixton 94!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fd0zLi4in8

oh I'm not anti-Moving at all (actually I don't think there's a single song I really dislike from the Butler era. except maybe "The Power").
I simply think it's not as good as some of their b-sides of the time and could have been replaced advantageously on the album by one of those !

All this revisionist stuff about placing B-sides on Suede and Dog Man Star is pointless, IMO... the first disc of Sci-Fi Lullabies exists, so it's not like anyone lost out. I wouldn't change a thing about any of those records.

Well, I never said "Moving" or "Animal Lover" HAD to be removed (since I said I loved the album as it is, with its imperfections).
The question was whether these tracks were as strong as the rest of the album : I don't think so, some think so.
No problem !

Speaking of "Sci-Fi", I wonder why "Painted People" was the only b-side rejected...

It wasn't! There's a couple of others that didn't make it on there from both eras.

Ah I don't really know the post Butler era b-sides... It seemed unfair since it's a pretty good early Suede track !

'Dolly' and 'This World Needs a Father' ... both Butler-era, both not on Sci-Fi Lullabies

Moving is great. I like how it borrows heavily from XTC's Generals & Majors for the chorus. Animal Lover is easily the weakest song on there.

'Dolly' and 'This World Needs a Father' ... both Butler-era, both not on Sci-Fi Lullabies

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican)

Asda Town as well. That and This World Needs a Father should have been on there.

Ah never noticed for "Dolly" and "this World" ! Maybe because I had the singles...

'This World Needs a Father' in particular is really underrated, I think.

Ah for me it would be "whipsnade". One of their absolute finest moments afaic.

At least they've been known to play 'Whipsnade' live, I'm not sure 'This World Needs a Father' ever has.

Well, I like "This World" and it has something immediate and catchy but I don't know, there's also something second rate in both the songwriting and production.
It's catchy and simple like a single but sounds and lacks depth like a b-side !
It doesn't really make sense, does it ?

Love the first album, parts of the second (especially the b-sides) and "Trash" - the rest I don't care about much.

Suede were important to me when they first came on the scene because their sleazy sex glam was an epiphany to me about what I didn't like about Grunge. I was a kid raised on images of Duran Duran so it took me a while before I realized, oh yeah, Mother Love Bone is pretty much the opposite of what I have learned to think was exciting. Suede emerged in all of that boring overcast Grunge bullshit and it was like, "OH YEAH, SEX!"

Fast forward a couple of years and my time with Suede was pretty much over. My divorce from their music was accelerated when I started dating this (American) girl who was obsessed with Britpop at the time who would put on the second Suede album and tell me things like "You see, the Asphalt World is really a clever play on words meaning the Ass Felt world." *farts*

Wait - are you people kidding, or are you mad? Animal Lover is by far my favorite song on this almost flawless album. It is a swirling ball of thrilling glam guitars, filthy lyrics, pummeling momentum and a glorious ending. The pause at 2:57 followed by that majestic chord strum is one of the most thrilling moments in all of music for me. When I'm listening to Animal Lover I can't imagine how any song could be better. I never tire of it. Thank God for Animal Lover, I don't know how I would manage to endure this otherwise hellish existence without it. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Brett's book's good. Crazy short mind.

Man, "Trash" is such a classic

Very good Ed Buller piece which i'm sure has been posted on Suede threads. Some fascinating stuff in here

https://www.repeatfanzine.co.uk/interviews/ed%20buller.htm

“Trash is the only thing in the entire history of working with Brett, I think (pausing) I don’t know, you’d have to ask him. But I would say that Trash is the only thing that he’s still cross with me about. Everything else, if it didn’t turn out right, he forgave me, because enough turned out well that he was really happy with. If you listen to Trash on the 2003 Singles compilation, he actually re-recorded the vocals!”

Sometimes the debut is the only music I can listen to these days

Or rather, the only music that I'm compelled to hear. It happens every few months

great stuff in that Buller interview indeed

Whereas on Daddy’s Speeding, he just got this weird thing in his head where he wanted the word speeding to sound like schhhpeeding (laughing), so it sounded like a car. He kept saying, “Does it sound like a car Ed?” And I was like (laughing), “Yes, it sounds like a car Brett – a big silver car going very, very fast!”

the questions are hilarious though

10.Do you have a favourite opening and closing album track + a favourite song intro, middle-section and outro?

Great interview.

When we started to do vocals, one of the agreements was that we wouldn’t use so many reverbs, we’d just use little delays. That obviously just started to go out of the window, because Brett can’t stand his voice being dry – he can’t stand it! He has to have lots of effects.

This explains a lot.