Suedes
8th studio album arrives 25 years into their recording career. This includes
the 7 year break the band took from 2003 which in itself was enveloped by an 11-year
gap between albums 5 and 6. The band have built this one up as being their most
ambitious and the expectations from their feverish fans (I am one of Facebooks ‘Insatiable
Ones’ myself) matches the band expectations in scale. With a big time producer
(Alan Moulder; The Killers, U2, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins amongst many
others) and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra present on 8 of the
albums 14 tracks there really is a feeling of reaching for new heights here.
The band have always had a big sound so how do they manage with this aiming big
strategy?
Well,
reception from very enthusiastic fans has been very enthusiastic! Myself? I’m
loving it, I feel it as a possible career highlight which has led me to go see
the band live for the first since they toured in support of album #3 ‘Coming
Up’. The band and in particular lyricist/vocalist Brett Anderson has spoken of a
theme to this album but won’t elaborate, saying he prefers the listener to read
into it and settle on the concept themselves, something I’m more than happy to
do. Musically this is a massive album, the guitar anthems are huge and the
interwoven orchestral movements, whether complimenting or leading are
wonderful. Opener ‘As One’ illustrates this, it’s cinematic, and though early
on there’s an atypical Suede riff this has an Omen overture feel to it and it
leaves you eager to hear the rest of the album. It also serves warning that
orchestra and rock meet here in one of their most perfect unions ever. ‘Wastelands’
is a huge Seudeanthem and as the chorus screams ‘When it all is much too much,
We’ll run to the wastelands’ it’s hard not to melt. The snow gets an early
mention too, and make no mistake, this a winter album, wind in your face and
cold rain pricking like needles. ‘Mistress’ shows us a different part of the
twilight town, as the other woman skulks behind her locked door, cold and
alone, but loved and needed. A brief spoken word piece (don’t cringe, it works)
leads into ‘Beyond the Outskirts’ which sounds autobiographical to anyone that’s
read Brett Andersons classy life story (vol.1) ‘Coal Black Mornings’. ‘Beyond the
outskirts, Come with us, We’ll jump out of the page’ indeed. It’s one of the
few orchestra free tracks yet it’s still massive, small town dreaming and blank
feelings all over my face. And ‘Coming Up’ riffage makes it’s first touchstone
appearance around it’s 2:20 mark which put simply makes you smile even through
the desolate picture being painted. ‘Chalk Circles’ is simply outstanding, a
synth washed nursery rhyme, feelings of abandonment, friendship bracelets and a
ring-road with a massed demonic choral hook. Scott Walker.
‘Cold
Hands’ is fabulous glitter stomp Suede, more ‘Coming Up’ era guitar feeling, it’s
an anti-anthem blast, ‘I followed you and now I want to curl up and die’ is
possibly the albums bleakest moment and it’s most helpless track. And it runs
into ‘Life Is Golden’, an absolute killer anthem, a song to Brett’s children (‘The
same blood runs through your veins’) that rises above being mawkish by simply
being amazing. ‘You’re not alone, Look into the light/You’re never alone, Your
life is Golden’. Think ‘All the Young Dudes’ 2018, really. ‘Roadkill’ is a
brave experiment, a poem about a dead bird recited as spoken word. Sound’s a
bit sixth form? But it’s lifted by its surroundings and outright bravado. ‘Today
I found a dead bird…’, haunting, inhabiting somewhere between ‘Future Legend’
and ‘Glass Spider’. A bit more Omen in the mix, it shouldn’t work… ‘Tides’ is a
slab of gothic finery, pretty desperate but powerful and still strangely
hopeful and uplifting. ‘Don’t be afraid if Nobody Loves You’ was the albums
first official single, the fact that it’s for me the weakest song here is a statement
of how good this album is because it’s still wonderful, (Suede)anthemic and
huge, promising love and beauty in a wilderness. ‘Dead Bird’ is a coda to the earlier
spoken word piece, it’s basically a field recording of Brett and one of his
kids burying a dead bird they’ve found all underpinned by the City of Prague
Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s 26 seconds long.
And here
the albums steps up and just gets better for the final climatic concerto of it’s
closing three tracks. ‘All the Wild Places’ is a none too subtle rewrite of Scott
Walkers ‘Plastic Palace People’. ‘Oh, off all the wild places I love, You are
the most desolate’ is its chorus. ‘The Invisibles’ was the first song made available
from the album and is a huge orchestral number with heavy Scott Walker
overtones too. I’d love to hear him singing these songs. This is like a
(national)anthem for Suede fans, ‘We are the invisibles, Strange and lonely’
with real life just out of reach. And as you sit thinking ‘We’ll how can they
better that?’ ‘Flytipping’ turns up and full stops the whole album. Not quite
rock opera, but close enough, orchestra drenched sections crash into piledriving
rock introduced by drum rolls so Beatlely that you swear the band have sampled
some old Oasis B-side. ‘And I’ll take you to the verges, as the paper drifts
like falling snow’ is a pretty killer line, as is the it’s closing ‘And I’ll
pick you wild roses in the tunnels by the underpass’. Lyrically, musically it’s
a peak, both the track and the album it comes from. For a band that already
have their acknowledged masterpiece (‘Dog Man Star’) this album is a masterpiece,
soon to be, I’m sure, acknowledged too.
My understanding
of the loose concept, ‘The Blue Hour’ refers too a particular time in life,
adulthood just before middle age, when you can appreciate childhood through
your offspring more than you ever did when you were a child yourself. It’s the pre-dusk
time of day and life, it’s the area between suburbia and the countryside. The fly
tipping and trash that covers the wastelands are the marks we as individuals
leave on the planet and on our descendants. That’s my take, my interpretation.
For the
financially flush (or foolish?) there’s a beautiful box set version, with CD,
LP and exclusive 7”, the brash, snotty and early Suede sounding ‘Manipulation’.
Apparently, there was nowhere it fitted into the album? It should have been wedged
in crudely, bang in the middle, like the rude awakening it is. Also in the box
is a wonderful instrumental version of the album, here, especially the more
orchestral tracks have a life, a cinematic, life of their own. It has more
gothic feel than any previous Suede album, the guitar especially bleeds Siouxsie
and the Banshees. I really haven’t bought in to an album like this since ‘Blackstar’.
Like that, this is a career highlight, in this case very possibly the artists
best.
10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment