Suede

Suede | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 1, 2008)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sbme Special Mkts.
• ASIN: B0012GMZ1I
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,277 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. So Young

2. Animal Nitrate

3. She's Not Dead

4. Moving

5. Pantomime Horse

6. The Drowners

7. Sleeping Pills

8. Breakdown

9. Metal Mickey

10. Animal Lover

11. The Next Life

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sounds like Morrissey and Bowie's love-child, May 28, 2001

By 

Jeremy Young (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Suede (Audio CD)

Picking a favourite Suede album is very difficult. Each album of theirs has, at one time, been my personal favourite.

I pick their debut, "Suede", for its longevity and consistency. This was the first album I had bought of the band, and I bought it blind, having never heard them before. Or is the correct team deaf?

When the guitars on the opening track "So young" kicked in, I thought "this sounds nice". Five seconds later, I was in shock. The vocals started. You have to appreciate that I had never heard Brett Anderson sing before, and its quite a shock when you hear his unique voice for the first time. I'll admit his voice is a very acquired taste. To avoid an album review cliche, I won't say it's the kind of voice you either love of hate. Instead I'll say that it's the kind of voice that it's possibly to simultaneously love and hate. Like many great performers (including Bob Dylan and Morrissey), Brett Anderson doesn't have what you would call a conventially good singing voice. However, when you combine his singing voice with the music and unique lyrics, it sounds nothing less than brilliant. Nobody else could sing these bizarre lyrics with such emotion.

So why do I choose that album as my favourite? The most common fan favourite is "Dog Man Star", but I sometimes find this album too ambitious for its own good. Sure it contains some classics like "We are the pigs", "The wild ones", "The power" and "The asphalt world", but it also contains "Black or blue" arguably the worst Suede song ever released, and easily the most pretentious. "Coming up" sounds like a greatest hits compilation, but lacks the longevity. "Head music" sounds great, but it has a few duds.

"Suede" is a fantastic, consistent collection of songs. From the catchy campness of opener "So young", to the superb glam rock of "Animal nitrate" and "Metal Mickey", to the powerful epics "Pantomime horse" and "Breakdown" - this is a music with blood pumping through its veins. And who can forget "The drowners", the first Suede single, and an instant classic.

Not only do Suede rock musically, but Brett Anderson is one of the most unique lyricists to come out of the 90's. Obviously influenced a lot by Morrissey, his lyrics range from obscure sexual imagery ("...ever tried it that way, have you ever tried it that way?"), to more obvious sexual imagery ("does your love only come, does your love only come, does he only come in a Volvo?"), to utter disgust ("I know you've been inside but what were you in for? animal lover, animal, animal lover?").

Suede are one of the best bands of the 90's. Listen to this album to hear where it all began.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and Poison..., February 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Suede (Audio CD)

Suede were a major band in the 90 (though you wouldn't know it from the lukewarm reception afforded to the mediocre Head Music). Their first album is a testament to the raw, disillusioned arrogance of a band that took the English music scene by storm back in 1993, and breathed some life (and some controversy) into a pretty stale period. Brett Anderson, with his cropped tops, floppy fringe and penchant for whipping his backside with the microphone when performing live, was every inch the glamorous, outrageously outspoken popstar that we had been waiting for, worshipped and reviled in equal measure. Bernard Butler was the guitar virtuoso with the talent and vision to back up Suede's grand statements of musical revolution. Though they wore their influences like badges of honour - Bowie, The Smiths, T-Rex are usually mentioned - they were no 70s throwbacks, with their distinctly 90s take on urban decay, disillusioned youth and drug-fuelled decadence, every day tragedies in the satellite towns of England.

So Young lights the blue touch paper in splendid fashion, the album's opening track ushering in a superb cocktail of frenzied Butler guitar playing and Brett's desperate falsetto in full flow. Animal Nitrate is another stomper, fulfilling Brett's ambition to see a song about dubious sexual practices reach the top ten. The real pearls on this album, though, are the slow ones: Sleeping Pills, Breakdown and She's Not Dead are gorgeously majestic tales of wasted youth and spiritual desolation.

While Dog Man Star can count some Suede classics among its number (The Wild Ones, The Asphalt World), it is the soundtrack of a band in crisis, and Bernard Butler departed before its release. Coming Up was a solid effort but not inspiring enough to really thrill. Head Music was disappointing, and could well mark the end of one of the great bands of the last decade. However, Suede, the debut album, is a powerful reminder of how great Suede the band once were and how great British music can still be.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily one of the ten greatest albums of the nineties, March 31, 2007

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Suede (Audio CD)

Nearly fifteen years after its release, Suede's eponymous first album remains as lushly gorgeous as ever, perhaps because even at the time of its release it seemed to be looking back to the glam rock of the seventies and the best of the Smiths in the eighties. Today the music seems hardly to have aged at all. Although Suede made several albums, they were at their best only in their first two albums, during which singer/lyricist Brett Anderson teamed with guitarist/writer Bernard Butler teamed to write some of the most spectacularly theatrical songs to emerge from the decade. After SUEDE and the almost equally superb second album DOG STAR MAN (named after a series of avant-garde short films by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage) Butler left the band.

It is tragic that Anderson and Butler couldn't have remained collegial longer. As a team they perfectly complimented one another. Anderson sold the songs with such passion and sensuality that could perhaps be matched only by Jarvis Cocker during the same period. Though they recorded in the wake of punk, Anderson sounded as if he could have fronted any of the great glam bands of the seventies. As for Butler, did Great Britain produce a greater guitarist in the entire decade? Or even in the decade that followed? Stylistically he always reminded me of someone who listened to a lot of Dave Gilmour before discovering Johnny Marr. The heart of his playing owes a lot to Marr, but the edges are softer and darker, like Gilmour. Though SUEDE and DOG STAR MAN are not often thought of as great guitar albums, they in fact contain some of the most brilliant playing of the last twenty years.

Though the Anderson-Butler version of Suede stayed together only a while, they left us with a string of utterly stunning singles. "So Young," "Animal Nitrate," "The Drowners" (which was a massive hit), "Sleeping Pills," and "Metal Mickey" are all songs that are simply perfect. Though not the most celebrated cut on the album, my favorite Suede song might be "Pantomime Horse," which combines some of Anderson's most passionate singing with some of Butler's most astonishing playing to produce an epic masterpiece.

Anyone who loves music needs this album. I recently was talking to a huge Radiohead fan who incredibly had never heard this album. It is hard to realize if you have been following music for more than a couple of decades how quickly albums move from being "contemporary" to being "classics." But regardless of the label, this is an album anyone not knowing it really needs to own. It is one of the essentials.