Suede

Night Thoughts still holding up incredibly well. If you told me back in 2002 that Suede still had a record like this in 'em I wouldn't have believed you at. Astounding.

I always thought it was suspect that I picked up a 2nd hand non-promo copy of A New Morning four days after it was released

*at all, rather.

I remember going to buy A New Morning, funnily enough... I remember looking at the cover on the racks and thinking "hmm... that doesn't really look like a Suede sleeve"

it looks like it's eating the head music sleeve

btw there's a twitter account devoted entirely to lyrics of Head Music THE SONG https://twitter.com/musicinstead

deluxe coming up came out yesterday. i did not know that "europe is our playground" on scifi lullabies is a different version than the one from the trash single.

i am extremely delighted that its working title was "sombre bongos"

Yeah, it was re-recorded for Sci-Fi Lullabies... I think the band felt they'd improved upon the song from playing it live and wanted to get a better recording of the song that did it justice. The right decision, IMO, it's one of their best ever songs.

I like both versions myself! Strongly suspect I'll have to get this; it remains my favorite album of theirs, even if other albums have greater individual songs.

I still have a hell of a lot of time for Coming Up, too. Yes, it's unashamedly a big, brash pop record, but that's the great thing about it.

Been listening to the deluxe Head Music. Lots of good stuff I forgot about.

Yeah that run of B-sides in particular is underrated. I'm still amused at how "Let Go" ended up becoming a random hit in Sweden -- single was released there and everything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVQ6qBfukU4

I watched the Oasis documentary the other night, for some reason, and it really made me realize how much I never liked Oasis. The other year I watched that Blur doc, too, and I thought, hmm, I never really got into Blur, either, though I liked more of their stuff a lot more than Oasis. But Suede, Suede was the sweet spot, just what I needed, OTT arty glam punk perfect (if a sense). I watched this interview with Brett and Bernard on youtube, probably from the Dog Man Star reissue, and they made some interesting revelations. Bernard, for example, had Joy Division's Closer in mind for a lot of the album, not the sound of it, just the spirit, really. And Brett, who had never listened to Scott Walker, had been listening to a lot of Scott Walker, because some review had compared one of their b-sides to Scott Walker. So again, Walker is there in spirit if not really in sound (though they did use his string arranger).

A lot of the more obvious stuff that infuses Suede, Bernard points out it really hadn't been in the air for some time. In the early '90s, were there British bands referencing Bowie and T. Rex, let alone the Smiths (who Butler worshipped)? I don't know. It's the same way Blur and Oasis to some extent brought back the Kinks and the Beatles, or Elastica with Wire and the Stranglers and Buzzcocks and UK post-punk, just sort of opportunistically striking after several years of those acts being slightly out of favor/the spotlight. Good timing.

I've since come around to a lot of Head Music - sure, Brett being off his face most of the time probably hampered the record (especially lyrically) but now I see Head Music as an '80s revivalist record made at a time when it was painfully fucking uncool to do such a thing. In that sense, there's an argument to be made that it was, in a way, ahead of the curve.

80´s ? I had never thought of it that way !

Yeah, I don't know about that. If anything it sounds more typically '90s.

"Let Go" is very nice, hadn't heard that before

Head Music has a very aggressive sound iirc, but I had it on cd and played it to pieces on my discman - some good songs on it, "Electricity", "Everything Will Flow", "She's in Fashion"

yeah, I think HM sounded very late 90s (and already dated upon release...).
"Everything Will Flow" is the best track for me.
"Down" is nice also but a bit underdeveloped, more like a b-side.
"She's in Fashion" could have been good but there's something wrong with it, I don't know what.
The rest goes from average to trash (especially the second half - from "Asbestos" to "Crack" - which is abysmal).

Oh, I'm incredibly sure of it. 'Hi Fi', for example, sounds like The Human League. It does not sound like Underworld.

Interesting...
I'm absolutely no expert of that album/period but apparently :

"Anderson has said the album was influenced by Asian Dub Foundation, Audioweb, Tricky, Prince and Lee "Scratch" Perry."

And the choice of Osborne for the production was due to their desire to sound more electronic/dancey.
In the context of the mid/late 90s, maybe they didn't have 80s electronic/dance in mind.
that said, I agree it doesn't sound like Underworld.
But I never heard any 80s influence. I might try to listen to it again (which might take some effort !)

I can hear a little bit of Prince in there, but it's mid '80s Prince rather than '90s Prince.

I don't detect the influence of ADF, Tricky or "Scratch" Perry at all... and neither do I hear Portishead, Massive Attack, Underworld, Lamb etc. Maybe a little bit of G-Funk on 'Asbestos' ... all those things may well be amongst what Brett was listening to at the time that the record was made, but it's not what the record sounds like.

What I do hear is a mixture of '80s synthpop, a tiny bit of late '70s Bowie (particularly in the guitar work), '80s Prince, smooth '80s pop, and the usual Suede glam riffs.

If they tried to make a contemporary "dance" record, then they didn't really succeed.

eheh. I think, whatever they tried there, they failed !

"She's in fashion" is atrocious

I like 'She's In Fashion' more now than I did at the time. As a song it's no more than a two-chord groove, but the synths and the acoustic guitar on it sound so lovely.

Head Music could have been a very different record if they'd included stuff like 'Crackhead' and 'Heroin' ...

Sadky, Head Mysic was where i no longer enjoyed Suede

Had Elephant Man and the title track simply been nixed then this album would have been more fondly-remembered

Saviour Faire has always received a lot for it's dumb lyrics, but I always assumed they were intentional, a complete break from the ornate imagery he was known for.

It's rarely discussed but Suede from Coming Up onwards seem to have been increasingly intent on shedding the Bernard-era's image and outlook, which obviously ended very badly by the time of the split. Only post-reformation did Suede Mk II really seem to be trying to channel the earlier years.

Man I love "She's in Fashion". That woozy riff is really transporting for me, even if the chorus is pretty simple

i have signed up to do the Suede poll and man are you guys getting me excited about running that one. it still probably won't happen for a couple of years however.

i owned everything up to Head Music.

Sadky, Head Mysic was where i no longer enjoyed Suede

yeah,I bought it and for a time liked some of it but it didn't last. Actually, it's a bit of a
"New Jersey" for them !
number 1 album, seemed huge at the time and then nobody cared quickly and they vanished then split...
that said, my LOVE for the band was only for the Butler era. Even by "Coming up" I didn't care as much.

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'.