reviews on suede

DOG MAN STAR
by Claudia from Indonesia
Star rating: ***** of ***** (5/5)

Were I to choose the album of the century, or even of the millennium, I'd choose Dog Man Star instantly. Despite of my fondness of Coming Up, I've got no other choice but to admit that Dog Man Star is a hugely brilliant album. In one suitable word, epic. It's almost unbelievable that the album was made by humans just like us.

Opened by the grand mantra-like Introducing the Band, it's like a warning that something greater is coming our way. And indeed it is, through the next 11 songs after. They are, undoubtedly, among the 'songs of all time'. Dark and hard guitar-sounded We Are The Pigs closes smoothly with a children-choir, that makes the song comparable to a conflagration that distinguishes smoothly by itself in the end. This is followed by a man's song about his longed Heroine, featuring excellent bass tricks by Mat as the base of the song. As the 4th track is the greatest love song I've ever heard in my life: The Wild Ones. A classic. With touching melody that perfectly metaphors one's yearn for the loved one, this song had my favourite most romantic poem ever as its lyrics.

Soon after we crashed in Daddy's Speeding, with melancholic piano tunes ascend to the climax: 'boom' in the end. The boom than followed by soft piano, a nice illustration of sleeting pieces from a car after it blew up. The Power has the most dramatic melodies I've ever known, especially in my favourite part: the 'la la'. Coming after is New Generation with a chorus that would touch anybody's heart. This Hollywood Life screams a side of celebrity life of the character called 'she-rocker'; followed by slow romantic The 2 Of Us where lies another favourite line of mine: 'alone but not lonely, you and me' saying that being alone not necessarily means being lonely. Black or Blue follows, that's cognate to The 2 Of Us in making me feel the atmosphere of cold London nights. The album closes dramatically with orchestral Still Life that whisks our feelings high before crashing to the painful reality: we've landed at the album's end. Make us wonder how still our lives would be without Suede. Of course, we can always play it back repeatedly....

The dramatic content is equivalent to the dramatic making behind it. Most likely both are connected, as Brett analyses: "All those songs were written with this looming cloud over us, which is why there's such an air of tension on them...." The album saw a crucial turning point in Suede history. Bernard walked out in the middle of recording, got married and left the band. They recruited Richard a month before the album's release, and he had to tour around playing 'Bernard's songs' until Brett forced him to write, that resulted in Together (b-side for New Generation). They faced a new dilemma: everybody was convinced that they're finished. However the album is still unbelievably brilliant, epic, and classic. Let's give them extra credits for that, along with a long applause for Dog Man Star.