Suede: all that's best of dark and bright

Super-British Suede: Brett Anderson on the cover of Select Magazine, his trademark ca 1992/1993 look in place; side swept fringe, gorgeous facial structure, showing off his hipbones.

I consider Suede an extremely elusive band. Their sound and charm evades description just as the band failed to achieve permanence. Their glory blazed and burned in a few brilliant years in the early 1990s and two stunning albums. Brett Anderson starts off 'Heroine' off Dog Man Star with a Lord Byron quote, 'she walks in beauty like the night.' Perhaps the best way of describing the band is from further on in the poem; 'one shade the more, one ray the less/had half impaired the nameless grace...' For one perfect moment, Suede were the best. For one perfect moment, they had all the energy, passion, emotion and expression that tapped directly into the frenzy and alienation of youth. And for that moment, I absolutely adore them.

 

Suede play 'Animal Nitrate' at the Brit Awards in 1993 in one of the most famous moments in TV music performance history. The power and aggression of the live rendition makes the album version sound utterly lifeless.

I might be the only fan of Suede who likes their eponymous debut album better than Dog Man Star. With mere reason, I know quite clearly that Dog Man Star is the superior album, but my heart belongs to the self-titled gem. Dog Man Star is a magnificent opus, but it lacks the freshness, the enthusiasm, the charm of the first album, perhaps even a sort of innocence. Suede has the infectiousness that defines rock's greatest debut albums such as Up the Bracket and Is This It. Edith Wharton once wrote that everything about a novel is encapsulated in its first paragraph (or something to that effect). Everything about Suede is encapsulated in their first album, it holds the clue to everything they would later do. It has the almost melodramatic wails of 'Sleeping Pills' and 'Pantomime Horse', the swampy lure of 'The Drowners' and 'So Young', the punk aggression of 'Animal Nitrate', the melancholy of 'The Next Life'. But mostly, Suede is an album I can relate to, while Dog Man Star I can admire, and admire from a distance. I might also be the only Suede fan currently residing in the city of Chicago. Unlike 90s British bands such as Oasis, Blur, and the Verve, Suede never made it big in America. It often seem to me that there is a distinct correlation between the lack of quality of bands and their popularity in America.

I tend to think of Britpop as the accidental child of Suede and Pulp that they both decided to give up for adoption. Both bands have denounced the movement and rejected their affiliation with it. Suede especially are credited with unintentionally inventing Britpop with their first album, while Pulp's 'Common People' is considered the ultimate Britpop anthem. Both bands (like all the best bands) transcended their allotted 'genre', leaving it for the Beatle plagiarists Oasis and train wreck of Blur to champion Britpop. The primary reason Suede were supposed to have 'created Britpop' is that they were so uniquely and quintessentially British. It is probably that they were unintentionally British to begin with, seeing as they knew no other life. Almost none of their musical roots can be traced back to America; they started out as a Madchester-sounding somewhat 'jingly' guitar band (check out one of their first recordings, 'Be My God') and their primary influences were the Smiths and Bowie. Brett Anderson often stated in interviews that he sought to capture ordinary life as he saw it, whether it be friendships, drugs, or sex and clearly the life he saw was exclusively British in character. No one in America would ever write songs about romantic, desperate, drug-induced, sexually deviant love in suburban council flats. Desperate, drug-induced fucking in deserted parking lots, maybe. There is something especially British in Suede's grandiosity, their poetry, their ambition. It's that spark of Romanticism that made the Libertines so incredibly appealing.

 'The Drowners' music video: probably everything you have to know about Suede. Brett's hair and flouncing honed to perfection.

My reasons for my fondness for especially Suede are in many ways uniquely personal. I was born and raised in the Moscow equivalent of a British council estate, and I can't help thinking of the atmosphere of urban dreams and urban poverty when I hear their music. I remember being forced to read Simone de Beauvoir's gigantic feminist bible The Second Sex on at least two separate occasions in college (thankfully only in parts) and being completely confused by this sentence; 'But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: "I am a woman"; on this truth must be based all further discussion.' I wasn't very receptive to the thousand or so pages of 'further discussion' because I just could not relate to thinking of oneself first and foremost as a gender. Imagine my delight with Brett Anderson quotes such as 'I'm naturally quite an effeminate person... not all the time' (from this 1994 article) and 'I just don't feel I'm a fully fledged member of the male sex...' (here). Not subscribing to a set of gender roles or even having a strictly defined focus on one's gender was something that I can relate to and come across very rarely.

Also, let the truth be spoken; Brett Anderson was gorgeous. And he knew it and played with it shamelessly. He wore flouncy blouses onstage that he let the audience tear off his body. His clothes always showed a strip of skin from his belly to his prominent hipbones. He let his hair fall over half his fine-boned, sensitive face then threw it back again. He somehow managed to slap his own ass during his bizarre dancing. He turned his back to the audience, showing off his beautifully curved spine and graceful movements. He was alluring, provocative, charismatic. His androgyny was mostly a matter of skillful presentation. For those who haven't noticed, women's bodies tend to be portrayed in popular media as passive, smooth, lush, and quiet, while men's tend to be shown as rough, aggressive, and strong. Even though Brett was by far not the most outrageously androgynous rock star (he never wore makeup for instance), he consistently presented himself the way women are popularly portrayed; luscious, smooth, graceful, almost passive.

Brett Anderson's attitude towards gender and sexuality was constantly the talking point in interviews. On further investigation, I discovered that his famous 'I am a bisexual man who has never had a homosexual experience' statement was in fact a misquote. Apparently he said, speaking of songwriting that 'I feel like a bisexual man etc.' which is quite different. He seemed to be obsessed with the idea of living through various potential and/or imaginary experiences, and combined with his cheeky evasiveness in interviews, this made him very open to misrepresentation. The media was completely unable to process the idea that Brett was writing from multiple points of view and describing non-autobiographical experiences. Brett's ambition of experiencing as many facets of life as possible unfortunately wound up leading him down the path to heavy drug use and later addiction, which destroyed the band's promise.

Brett showing off his lovely figure and his charming long-in-the-front-short-in-the-back haircut

Suede's sense of drama is incredibly admirable. In an interview, Brett talks about the first Smiths song he heard, 'What Difference Does It Make?'; 'the line that got me was "but still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you"... It's inches away from being a cliche, but it's so straight and so beautiful...' Inches away from being a cliche is basically a great way of describing a large portion of Suede's lyrics. And at times they're utter nonsense ('don't take your life 'cause your bicycle won't fly'). Why do they work? Most definitely the combination of Brett's fantastic vocal range and genuine emotion with Bernard Butler's spectacular guitar playing. Written on paper, some of Suede's lyrics would make one scream, but the pathos, the raw emotion in Brett's voice elevates them immediately into the realm of indisputable truth and power. It took me a while to realize that the band's first single 'The Drowners' is admirably lacking in all lyrical content (except for the suggestive 'do you believe in love there?' written down the narrator's spine) and mostly depends of Brett's outrageously exaggerated Cockney 'stop taking me ah-vahr!' Continuing on the subject of the Smiths, Johnny Marr's influence is felt all over Bernard Butler's playing, but no one could say Bernard is not an original. It is as much the emotion of his guitar playing as the strength of Brett's singing that carry the songs, for who can help listening when lines such as 'have you ever tried it that way' are accompanied by that brooding, oozing guitar?

Brett and Bernard right before the split.

 In conclusion, Suede were perfect. Listening to their early output, it's easy to forget the years of drug abuse, bad records, and regrettable haircuts that came later, and pretend like everything is at high tide forever.

Here are some great links for more Suede stuff:

• Love and Poison: the 1993 concert film in pretty good quality, shot by W.I.Z., the camera work is a little hyperactive and distracting and the audio is missing for some of the songs (replaced with the album versions) but overall definitely worth watching. I feel a personal attachment to this because the performance was at Brixton Academy, where I saw Jack White two years ago.
• Great blog of Suede live recordings and demos.
• Interviews and articles posted by ORTRUDA on tumblr.
• Live performances uploaded by jarvizcocker on youtube (also some great Pulp stuff! Please ignore Blur)