Suede

Remarkable to think they're on their fourth album in the reunion -- one away from matching the amount of the first run!

AUTOFICTION, the upcoming album from Suede featuring lead single 'She Still Leads Me On', is available to pre-order now from https://t.co/3DTE4GKm6z. pic.twitter.com/JmxeIZv2xl

— Suede HQ (@suedeHQ) May 23, 2022

Suede, made up of Brett Anderson, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling, went “back to basics” for this new record according to a press statement.

Yes, but was there a room?

5 guys, 1 room

Bloodsports was a 'back to basics' effort that fell almost completely flat imo, and the last two albums have been pretty great, so...hmm

That new single gives me no hope of great things to come... But I'm not really representative of their public anymore I guess since I didn't really care for any of their latest albums.

I still haven't properly dug into Suede Mark III (although bloody love "Fautlines"). I like the new single, although weirdly the beat makes it sound very "indie" in a way Suede aren't usually.

Is there anything as good as Apollo 13 on the rest of the Tears record?

Oh I love the Tears record !
For me it's an approximation of what the 3rd Suede album could have been if Butler had stayed : lighter, poppier with a rnb/soul touch (basically a mix between coming up and yes !) but 8 years later...

some interesting ideas on their recent material, I just can't get with the production

would love to catch them live, happy they're still at it

Bloodsports was a 'back to basics' effort that fell almost completely flat imo, and the last two albums have been pretty great, so...hmm

Haha we have the exact opposite opinion on this run of albums. Bloodsports is the only one I'd save in a fire.

I'm experiencing diminishing returns with the reunion albums. Apart from Barriers being a slightly disappointing opener, I thought Bloodsports was fantastic and a great apology record for A New Morning and how it ended the first time round. Snowblind, It Starts & Ends With You and Hit Me are great Suede in glam pop mode moments and the darker ballads at the end are all really effective. I still play the album a lot. Night Thoughts is good but can be a bit much in one sitting. Some of the upbeat songs (especially Like Kids) aren't up to much. I've listened to Blue Hour several times and still can't remember a single song on it. It's not a New Morning style embarrassment, but just a bit bland.

Overall, I'm glad they're still going and they've done an excellent job of reminding people of why they were so special. It was tragic how it ended. If they'd called it a day after Head Music (using the good songs like Simon, Oceans and You Belong to Me from the New Morning era as the token new songs on the best of) their legacy wouldn't have been in tatters for those few years.

I'll still check out the new album. Based on the new single and the description, I'm actually looking forward it more than the last one.

Well FINALLY touring here in the US again. Plus another band, it turns out!

https://americansongwriter.com/the-london-suede-manic-street-preachers-tour-north-america-in-2022/

O_O

Since I've been digging through and posting old Late Night talk show performances...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEKGxtNov_4

Suede doing the Top 10 US Modern Rock hit "Metal Mickey" on Jay Leno in '93.

Holy shit!!!! Suede US tour!

xpost Saw that at the time!

And yes a tour at long last. They did do a one-off at Coachella when the reunion first happened but nothing over here since -- it's quite literally over 25 years now since the last US tour.

I somehow totally missed that there was another new album coming. I read some review of their secret show this past week and it compared them to the Cult, which I'd never considered. But this song sounds a bit like the Cult, lol, and is also pretty good:

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

(YT makes it sound like it was recorded in a bathroom, for some reason)

Got two pretty good seats in the presale, $250 total inc. fees. Suck it, Springsteen.

I got middling but only ~$70 seats for Toronto, still happy! It’s a small and beautiful venue

xxp it sounds a bit Cult-y but is that because of the guitar intro and there being a shit-ton of reverb on everything? Anyway this song rules but yet again I'm wishing I could hear Brett's vocals clearly:

"We are stink in the aaaarse" = "We are stained in our hearts"

"Laying in the Roman" = "Lying in the road"

"We are stink in the aaaarse" can be the new "She smells farts."

Got GA on the floor at the Warfield, $70 including charges! No complaints!

Looks like there are still lots of reasonable tix here. Every once in a while I check back in, see them and think, shit, I should just buy some more! Kind of like when you're in a record store and you find a super cheap copy of an album you like and just buy it to give to someone some day.

Looking over my old ticket stubs I have seen Suede twice

June 11, 1993 Hollywood Colonnade

And then with the Cranberries
October 2, 1993

I might have also seen them when I lived in San Francisco as well if they toured?

I want to go but this might come down to the 1975 or. If that's the case then the 1975 will win.

And then with the Cranberries
October 2, 1993

Was there as well! Had been hanging with Sony/Polygram promo friends beforehand, which led to an amusing run in with half the Cranberries along the way.

Really enjoying Autofiction so far, and it really reminds me - appropriately enough - of the Manics.

Brett almost sounds like JDB at points of That Boy on the Stage

"We are stink in the aaaarse" = "We are stained in our hearts"

― Being cheap is expensive (snoball)

I was hearing "we are Sting in our hearts".

Sounds good on first listen. Lots of it reminds me of early U2. They really did an excellent job with this whole comeback.

this is decent, improves after a rocky start, but i'll take the two previous albums over it

I'm loving this one. Not as much as Night Thoughts but for sure more than (what I remember of) Blue Hour.

Really is a strong album. Occurred to me today that there really are very few examples of a reunion phase like this happening at all to work so well; even if, as past posts are showing, there's high points and lower ones for folks -- I enjoy them all in different ways -- to have a run like this makes me think of nothing so much as Roxy Music's late seventies return or perhaps more appropriately the continuing existences of Wire, and even in the latter case Bruce Gilbert permanently left a while back into their third phase whereas this looks like it'll just keep on until the core five decide they've had their fun -- given the reception this album's received already and the live reports I'm sure we're getting a fifth album and therefore a full equal run to the first decade. Almost uncharted territory.

Like I wrote on Twitter, the production for once mixes the voice and guitars so that they're not shrilly at odds.

I haven't heard this record yet but I will soon. I notice I'm flip-flopping all over the place in the thread above about the post-2010 stuff. For most of the past decade, I think I mostly only ever listened to these records on headphones, where they do tend to sound truly diabolical. Recently, I made a point of listening to all of them through speakers - even reading the lyrics while doing so - and the experience was revelatory. Fuck me, with a bit of air between your ears and the overstuffed arrangements, these records are really fucking good. Night Thoughts especially. I've never heard such perfect descriptions of stifled middle-aged horniness. For example, I was amused to discover that the song Outsiders, which I'd previously dismissed as Suede-by-numbers with a title to match, was actually about two people having the kind of affair where you literally have to fuck outdoors.

Anyway, when I do hear the new one, I'll give it a proper listen before jumping in with any criticisms.

I look forward to your listen.

Because streaming is so easy I tend to listen to music in the shittiest manner possible, almost like a transistor radio. but when I listen on the stereo and actually get the physicality of the music, it's such a refreshing change.

Surprised to see this go in at number two and be their highest charting album since Head Music. I know album sales are crazy low at the moment, but 14,000 is actually not too bad and apparently higher than the last few (Blue Hour opened with 10,000). Even though I'm still unsure about some of the album, I'm happy for them and what they've achieved with this comeback. Keeping up the momentum this long since their reunion show in 2010 is not something I expected. It's crazy to think that the same time has passed from Bloodsports to the new one as their debut to A New Morning.

I bought tickets to their Chicago show, since I never expected I’d see them live. (I was also too young for their peak, having only started listening to them in 2005, in my 20s). I remember hearing the Tears and some of their first comeback LP, but I see I’ve missed a lot in the interim. Guess I’ll have to brush up on their last few, or at least, find a "best of" playlist that covers the last ten years. I have even less idea of what the Manics have been up to—I’m a fan of The Holy Bible more than I’m a fan of the band, though I dig assorted other songs.

I keep getting stuck replaying Personality Disorder and forget to listen to the rest of the record

Jesus Christ was that ever a show last night.

They were so great! Really hope they don’t take another 25 years to come back.

(to the sf Bay Area)

Show is tonight, I'm psyched. Looks like they might have reduced prices for leftover seats.

I saw a couple tweets from Mat Osman today or yesterday, one making fun of overcooked American food and the other making fun of Chicago's currently gloomy weather, and I immediately thought to myself, come on, dude, you're British, you invented overcooked food and gloomy weather.

The timing is nice; I revisited their discography and bootlegs a year or so ago, for the first time since I fell for them in 2007. My fervor for them at 38 year old isn't quite what it was at 23 (I'm less tolerant of Anderson's yelps) but it's a literal "once in a lifetime" chance. "The Wild Ones" was my go-to wallowing track whenever I'd fly home after visiting my long-distance girlfriend, and I spent many a sore-fingered afternoon trying to replicate Butler's guitar lines. Plus, the amazing Pavement shows last month thawed my resistance to seeing 30 year old bands. Finally, it'll be nice to just be among other fans; I've never met anyone IRL who's heard of Suede, and have only heard them in the wild at a Britpop night at the bar I used to frequent. (Club Foot, for fellow Chicagoans who remember it.)

It's more accurate to say I'm a fan of The Holy Bible than of the Manics; I bought the reissue when I was just discovering Howard Zinn etc. in the Bush years, so all those leftist quotes and iconography hooked me. I was on the fence about staying for them, but their setlist has enough stuff I'm familiar with that I might as well. Perhaps all those old ILX references to Nicky Wire in a banana suit will finally make sense...

At least he recognized how beautiful the venue is:

Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre is stunning pic.twitter.com/CNGlOunXye

— Mat Osman (@matosman) November 16, 2022

Wow, what a band.

So, I've never really understood Manic Street Preachers, and indeed, midway through the opening set, my wife leaned over and said "I don't get this band." I certainly can't see them following Suede, have they really been swapping headlining slots?

Yup, they have. Over in the UK that would likely make total sense but here...yeah, hm.

Suede headlining SF meant I had the right night.

Suede opening in Toronto means my friend and I get to leave early and go for a few drinks before getting home at a reasonable hour on a work night!

So which band is likely to be opening tonight in Silver Spring? Chicago was the last show.

Probably Suede, as the Manics opened in Chicago, and I believe they’re alternating.

I saw Suede at the Øya festival in Oslo in August. I loved it and it was the festival highlight for me. But obe thing surprised me, and that was the lack of new songs. The entire set contained the the new single and one song from "Bloodsports", nothing else from the reunion years, everything else from the 90s even including some deep cuts from the debut album (so great to hear "Pantomime Horse" at a Suede gig in 2022). And they had s new album coming in even, but ignored it completely save for that one single.

Looking at their setlists, this seems to be a typical thing. I like their new albums a lot (especially the two moodier ones in the middle) but they almost ignored that phase completely. This may have made the concert better, because even though the new songs are good, fans are less familiar with it than the old stuff. Especially since this was a festival eith not only hardcore fans in the audience.