London Suede - Dog Man Star

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Music reviews of Dog Man Star

Music Review: Maximum Suede
Rating: 5 Stars

"Oh let the century die to violent hands" Anderson laments amidst a swirl of distortion on the opening Introducing The Band, laying down the pre apocalyptic feel of the album. Anderson displays nearly all of his romantic obsessions on Heroine. Teenage boys, unreciprocated love/lust, domestic decadence, dead filmstars and those old stalwarts sexualy and and chemically ambiguous lyrics. The songs title is a sly pun. He's "been dying for hours and hours" though for what or who exactly we can only imagine. The bittersweet Wild Ones is the albums anomalous track a stray ray of FM friendly light betwixt veraying degrees of darkness. Movie icons are revisted in the chilling Daddys Speeding where over a delicate piano line Brets seeemingly disembodied voice tells us of his imaginary
adventure with James Dean "sadness brings his face to mine, come with me now it's your time". The shadow of Diamond Dogs era Bowie has been looming quietly throughout the album; the tracks harbouring something of an Orwellian dysutopia about them as they do. The influence is mostly keenly displayed here on The Power. It's monosylabic closing chants echo Starman and on New Generation whos gigantic glam rock opening sound is enough to make the Thin White Duke turn green with envy. With a sound so British it appears odd some how that Bretts lyrics are inherently anti-homeland on this work e.g. "you may live in a world that's gone, it's the English disease" or more blatantly "I don't care for the U.K. tonight". Quite refreshing in the light of bands like Blur and the Manics who are always telling us what a depraved and corrupt place America is never having lived there.

The sad and beautific "The 2 Of Us" is a character potrait of a lonely housewife- sung in the first person- estranged from a husband who's "making permanent love to the nuclear age". The song ends on a bizarrely optimistic note. Again there's that ambiguity "Alone but not lonely, you and me" she reflects as though things will turn out alright. But wait this is diametricaly contradicted by her next line "Alone but loaded" hinting at a short-lived happiness with a reality of pain and addiction looming like a harbinger. This creates a type of calculated decadence that is rarely found in other bands and an effect which gives Suede so much of their credibility as an original and ground breaking group in their own right. An air of chemical lethargy underpins the nine minute The Asphalt World as we are taken on a guided tour of the metropolitian underworld a place of taboo pleasure and unexpected delights. Any question as to whether Bernard Butler is anything but a six stringed brit pop genius will be quickly rectified by a listen to his blinding guitar work in this song. His axe shrieks and wails with a slowly increaing intensity bringing us head on into the heart of the most decadent darkness. Any attempt at romantic restraint is
disposed of entirely in the albums breathtaking closing epic "Still Life". The lonely housewife figure is reprised here sitting "there by the window, quitely killed for you". Sung in deep baritone over a full orchestra the song threatens to verge over into overblown melodrama at any moment. Yet, somehow Andersons sheer gall and sincererity wins us over. An apt finishing statement for a listening experience heretofore unsurpassed in the realms of Brit-pop history. Though not as immediate or as accesible as its predecessor (the song snippets found here are woefuly inadequate) it is easily the pinnacle of Suedes career thus far. "Cos on you my tattoo will be bleeding and the name will stain" indeed.

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