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The thread's pretty much sunk by now, but I'll bite...
The album does, as has already been noted, sound very much like Suede. I'm not sure, though, that it's quite as simple as "which Suede?"; while I'd agree with Our Lady that the songs overall sound rather Coming Up, it also contains significant elements which were lost from Suede post-Butler's departure, as well as elements of the increasingly-awful later Suede.
The guitars, for example, though playing Coming Up-esque quirky tunes, certainly have a lot more to them than Brett et al ever managed without Bernard, a complexity (or possibly just a competency? Brett was never actually very good at playing guitar, whereas Bernard... well, was) not seen since Dog Man Star and a more prominent glam tinge.
The vocals, on the other hand, are for the first half of the album definitely nowhere near early Suede, even including Coming Up in that. Compared to the rather feminine/adrogynous voice which helped make them famous, the first eight songs - particularly the singles - are sung in a rough voice which doesn't appear on any Suede albums, and which I've only heard at their truly awful Glastonbury appearance post-A New Morning, with even a kind of masculine swagger about it.
Bizarrely (to me, at least, who admittedly may have a rather stronger preference for androgyny in pop stars than the "average person"), though, it appears that this change in singing style may not just be a deterioration of Brett's voice but a conscious choice. From Brave New Century (which is easily the album highlight and better than anything Suede have done for a long time) onwards the style reverts to that familiar from the old albums, even at points matching the vocals on Suede's debut.
As far as the lyrics are concerned... argh. I know it's nothing new, but Brett seems to have an eye for the stunningly unpoetic simile, and the better songs on the album lyrically are just those which don't contain any couplets painful enough to make one want to scream. Plus, there seem to be plenty of occasions where lyrics are either horribly cliched, or horribly clumsy in their attempts to avoid being cliched. From Imperfections, for example:
And slowly we become one
We stick like chewing gum
I want your language to be appalling
I want you to play with my hair in the morning
Overall, though, it's certainly better than the last two Suede albums, and in some places (well, Brave new Century, basically) better than anything from Coming Up. And better, at least, than I expected... |
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