Suede - 'Singles' (Epic)
4/5
By: Toby L
Suede - a name all too commonly cruelly, and unjustifiably, battered. Purveyors of some of the 90s' most gleaming, British-grown hits and snappy fashion-attire, Brett Anderson and his leather-jacket clutching arsenal of indie-aficionados have survived drugs, line-up changes, more drugs, and public relationship break-ups to provide their first retrospective proper (or their second, counting b-side emporium, 'Sci-fi Lullabies' of '97), 'Singles'.
Yet, in spite of conjuring definitive career and era-peaks (many on display herein), the loss of pivotal guitarist Bernard Butler around the epoch of their second - and now-legendary - album, 'Dog Man Star' marked a blow that the band have found some feat to rise above ever since. Criticisms of tenuous lyrical-emissions from Anderson since the period (OK, the refrain of a mystical lady figure being the 'shape of a cigarette' within 'She's In Fashion' was always a heated point of contention), and strained creativity, if anything, 'Singles' is here to act as a celebratory reminder/advocate of one of the finest UK guitar-bands of the past decade.
And they're all here, every one of the band's twenty 45's, back-to-back in random, non-chronological order. Staggeringly, and favourably, there are moments throughout that you don't remember impacting quite so fervently upon their initial unleashing - the all-out, stomp-pop of 3rd LP 'Coming Up's 'Lazy', ragged chill of 'Filmstar', or infectious glam-thrash-pouts via 'Beautiful Ones' and 'Trash'; and even the poppy, airy brightness of 'Head Music's throbbing 'Electricity', elegiac 'Everything Will Flow', plus hammering 'Can't Get Enough'.
But, frustratingly, it's the ringing, dripping class of the band's first two (Butler-aided) albums that have lent the finest moments - a still glowing, mournful, strings-ensconced 'The Wild Ones', vibrant chug and chart-aplomb of 'Metal Mickey' and 'Animal Nitrate', let alone a glimmering, trumpets-parping 'New Generation'. When placed alongside a throwaway, dance-tinged newie ('Love The Way You Love'), what's proven is just how much the atmospheric, brooding finesse that the Suede of then were able to truly provide - an asset somehow and somewhere along the line exchanged for a comforting sense of knowing contentment, at the expense of the group's original, confrontational gusto and sheer urgency.
So seemingly, it was in their drama that arose the quintet's most consciously assured, engaging produce - the sound of a band intoxicated in its own shadows, drama and confusion. Yet, what may have been Suede's hell, was - to the rest of us - the sound of a unit provoking countless sleazy, sassy and sultry anthems, the likes of which don't deserve to ever become too easily forgotten.
Artists in this article: Suede
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