Posted here as a sort of explanation for the title of the last post but mainly because I always really loved Suede. Not quite as much as my wife, who is still a member of the fan club, and not enough to tolerate Brett's dreadful solo output, but enough to jump up and down behind Simon Price's mohawk a half dozen times or so.....
Incidentally, Brett attended the same architecture school as I did although not at the same time. Remarkably, he's actually older than me. He was known then for wearing a bright yellow suit accessorised - when he was in the college workshop - with a pair of welding goggles.
I found Suede most appealing when at their most preposterous, circa either the camp bottom waggling hi-jinks of The Drowners or the stylised trashy outsider silliness of Coming Up, an almost, but not quite, unforgivably cliche-ridden album.
To The Birds also contains one of the best references to cycling in pop, as the title of this post testifies. It's not as good as Morrissey's magisterial and heart breaking line "When you cycled by, here began all my dreams" from Back To The Old House, but, then again, what is?
Incidentally, Brett attended the same architecture school as I did although not at the same time. Remarkably, he's actually older than me. He was known then for wearing a bright yellow suit accessorised - when he was in the college workshop - with a pair of welding goggles.
I found Suede most appealing when at their most preposterous, circa either the camp bottom waggling hi-jinks of The Drowners or the stylised trashy outsider silliness of Coming Up, an almost, but not quite, unforgivably cliche-ridden album.
To The Birds also contains one of the best references to cycling in pop, as the title of this post testifies. It's not as good as Morrissey's magisterial and heart breaking line "When you cycled by, here began all my dreams" from Back To The Old House, but, then again, what is?
4 comments:
History has been kind to Suede, I think. I spent a couple of weeks mainly listening to Sci-Fi Lullabies and it went very well indeed with my disposition, recovering from an op with the appropriate painkillers.
They are responsible for some tripe (The Tears, good god) and more than anyone else for britpop, but are also a fine example of the setting up one's own world side of pop that I've always liked, with a fine sense of place - everything seemingly occurring either below the Heathrow flight path in some outer West London semi, or in a Holloway bedsit with peeling 70s wallpaper depending on the song. And to be entirely honest I prefer their spin on Ballard to, say, Kode 9's...Mind you, I never plucked up the courage to write a post about them. Pulp is one thing, but Suede might get me excommunicated from the hardcore blogosphere.
This one's a personal favourite. The more grandiose, opulent and absurd the better...plus they liked their tower blocks, did Suede.
Yes, they had a good grasp of a certain milieu, however cartoonish. I always liked how he sings the line from Lazy: "From the flats and the Mais-eeon-ettes"!
Post a Comment