Suede

I loved the flashness of Coming Up when it came along in the autumn of 96. You just had to admire Anderson’s survivalist instincts despite it being obvious they were never to be centre stage again. It had a cetain romance about it. They went for that deliberately cold, robotic, and mechanized sound with Head Music but what initially to me sounded brilliant soon wore away after a few weeks – it was the Suede LP that was stranded without context.

Saw them from speaker distance in the 100 club between their first 2 singles at the height of the hype and it was fantastic esp. after spending the summer at lank haired grunge gigs. I remember some of the radio interviews around the time of the DMS release. Brett seemed fucked out of it from the drugs but the album seemed like a strange but necessary anomaly in those last months of 1994 amongst the explosion of jungle, trip hop and Loaded culture. Anderson might have been an asshole but rather him than the whining and supercilious musoness of Butler.

Fave songs: The Chemistry Between Us, Wild Ones,

But THEN I SAW SENSE

I mean, just think of it this way, Brett looked less Instant Decadance than the Manics did. I mean, talk about putting any old clap on and then pretending to be fabulous, lordy.

NICK YOU HAVE NO SENSE.

So what does everyone think of the McAlmont & Butler album then?

Well, he did usually sport a builder's crack, and not to great effect.

Now he looks like Steve Dallas, at least that's funny...

I'm not really overly concerned or critical about the lyrics because they're supposed to be cryptic, OTT and rub people the wrong way. Bernard Butler really poncey and a bit phobic about Suede lifestyle things but he was the one I saw in Hampstead walking away from Diana funeral motorcade passage so perhaps secret royalist/conservative?

The difference between Suede decadence and Ritzy decadence is the former is queerish and the latter reads no books and loves no art.

I knew there was something weird about him, this makes sense (and is very funny)...

They met cos: Brett and Justine were at architecture college and togeth-ah for that duration and decided to form band with Mat, Brett's best friend. Drummers were tried, including Mike Joyce from the Smiths, then they got Simon and stuck with him. Bernerd was thrown up by a Melody Maker advert. Rule A is that the last one in on the advert is always the first one chucked. Ally, you won't like this but they wrote a great big long letter to Nick asking for their great hero Momus' verdict on their stuff; he wrote a sniffy one back saying they were so mediocre they'd be massive. Justine left band after leaving Brett for Demon Allbran.

Justine should've just stayed in Suede, she'd probably be better off.

But I'm paying for it now, just bringing this up has placed unsavory mental images in my head.

The Drowners
My Insatiable One
Metal Mickey
Animal Nitrate
So Young
Stay Together (edit)
We Are the Pigs
The Wild Ones
New Generation
Trash
Beautiful Ones
Saturday Night (edit)
Lazy
Film Star
The Chemistry Between Us
Electricity
She's In Fashion
Everything Will Flow
Can't Get Enough

(80:09, this one was easy to compile as a hits survey. the non-single tracks are my essentials - and remember if you disagree, post yours!)

I guess it's not that much of a surprise, but I just randomly put on the latter and it hit me like a falling anvil.

As it happened, I brought the singles disc with me to work. Revival time!

Heck no. A noted fan is one Mr. John Darnellye of the Goats of Mountain, who wrote a wonderful essay on the album in one of the last print editions of Last Train to Jakarta.

Where does a band like James play these days?

This year’s US tour is generally in 1200-1800 cap rooms. Suede’s co-headline with the Manics varied from 1000-2800, from a quick look.

I meant back in the UK.

New album rules.

I'm also seeing them in Bristol in February lol xps

I feel it is perfectly OK but has too much of this kind of lumpen neo-Suede rocker stuff like '15 Again' and 'That Boy On The Stage - or 'Like Kids' from a couple of albums back. Or the Brian Molko-tier stuff like "will you be my personality disorder" (good riff, though). The new album definitely feels like a more melodic (and superior) take on Autofiction, but the idea that they are gold-level Suede has flown completely over my head. And it's a bit of a shame to be left out. :(

Yeah this really sums it up for me. But it's also why I prefer Dog Man Star to Coming Up. I like their Scott Walker meets Crass material more than the short, sharp, post-punk blasts.

I liked the second half of Autofiction more than the first - Drive Myself Home and the the run from It's Always The Quiet Ones to Turn Off Your Brain And Yell. And I think to make a more compact, focused, melodic album, the left off the bits of Suede that I am most attracted to, which is the meandering, weird Suede.

I meant back in the UK.

ah! well, you can probably look it up next time you have five minutes on a bus.

True, I'm just not familiar enough with venue capacities there, so if, say, Suede were indeed strategically playing venue slightly too small for them, there's no way for me to know that.

I don’t know the capacity of every venue in the UK, I just Google ‘[venue.name] capacity -ai’ and it tells me!

My observation that they’re playing venues slightly too small for them comes from a) how quickly they sell out b) how crowded it feels at the gigs and c) the fact that they copped to doing this previously on tours where they were trying to build hype

I don't disbelieve you at all, I just meant that if I saw Suede was playing a (I dunno) 3000 person venue in the UK, I wouldn't know if that was too small for them or the right fit. For comparison, James is playing Brooklyn Steel tomorrow. That venue is 1800, which seems about right for James in America. But would 1800 be too small for James in the UK? No idea.

James recently played near me in Cardiff Castle (with Shed Seven supporting lol)

Capacity is about 9K/10K but no idea if it sold out

For comparison The National, Pet Shop Boys, Fontaine's DC, Sting, The Human League, Primal Scream and Elbow have also all played there in the last year or two

i'm just repeating the "ooh there are occasional post-punk textures on this thing" observation, but it is nice for a suede album to remind me of the chameleons and comsat angels

Ha, yeah, someone in one of the fan groups posted the cover of Strange Times as a reference the other day, rightly.

yeah, otm, it's really in that wheelhouse.

The album is starting to click for me, with repeated listens. Headphones really helped. Listening to what the guitars are actually doing. Hearing the fine grain of the 'post-punk textures' - there's a lot more going on in the guitar department than just thrashing and angularity

There's a lot of chorus on the guitars as well as just distortion which comes through nicely on headphones

"Disintegrate" kind of reminds me (the music not vox obv) of later period Rush, like I could hear it on Clockwork Angels or something

I've u-turned hard on this album now and love it. For a phone-shot video, this is absolutely incredible. Captures Suede at their live best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY2ksIuZEhM

Ugh, people who stand down the front and film the whole gig on their phones are a PLAGUE and should be taken out back and shot (and also are completely contrary to Suede's entire message which is 'put down your phone and live in the moment')

BUT LAST NIGHT WAS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. Old men at the top of their game! The lights went down and this faint ominous thudding started, got louder and louder, really menacing sounding in a kind of We Are The Pigs way. Until the band came out and it morphed into Disintegrate - which is absolutely apocalyptic live! Those moments where the thrash of the music stops and Brett gets the entire hall to sing 'come down and disintegrate with me!' - their lyrics often look meaningless when written down, but the way he sings them and gets 1000s of people to chant along is something really powerful.

Good mixture of new material, Ver Hitz!!! and some real deep cuts. (Crackhead! Killing of a Flash Boy! This Time) I will never not sing along to Trash or Metal Mickey.

They really need to get Brett a cordless mic for the moments when he decides to go walkabout. It's fun that he still does it, and those moments of personal connection feel so meaningful. (he is still very, very cute when he smiles that little boy smile.) But I was right in the 4th row and that cable gets really really dangerous when it starts snaking around through the seats.

It's cheeky tho, that they've nicked the Crass logo for their new T-shirt design. I kept doing double takes seeing extremely un-Crass looking people wearing what looked like Crass T-shirts. (I know Brett is a huge fan, but there's not much of an overlap in the fanbase.)

The Fash had mostly dispersed by the time I got to the SBC apartment from a few straggling drunks dressed up like football louts

But it still felt weirdly Suede in an odd way, picking your way through a litter of broken England flags to get to the gig

Extraordinary again tonight.