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An Unlikely Reunion

It’s hard to think back to the days when Suede seemed unstoppable, when the music world seemed to be theirs for the taking. Rewind to 1993, and the band had just released the fastest-selling UK debut since Frankie Goes to Hollywood , also managing to walk home with the Mercury music prize. They were Britpop before Britpop had properly come into being, one of the first signs of the way in which things would go for the rest of the decade, making a stand against a background dominated by the distinctively American sound of grunge. A very Britishness Suede, with their dirty glamour, sexual ambiguity and faux-Bowie stylings, came not so much as a breath of fresh air as the first gusts of a wind of change.

Back then, Suede vocalist Bret Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler were widely touted as “The best British song-writing duo since the Smiths’ Morrissey and Marr”. Their relationship was also similarly turbulent. Starting out as an inseparable pair, wearing the same clothes and smoking the same brand of perfumed cigarettes, they found themselves at war during the recording of the album Dog Man Star, with Butler walking out on the band before recording was completed.

What he left behind was the great masterpiece of Britpop. Dog Man Star put Suede in a different league from the other Britpop heavyweights. More ambitious, more pretentious, more glamorous and darker than anything else from that period, it’s a failed masterpiece that was doomed to fail from the start only because its ambitions were so great. It’s the melodramatic soundtrack to Anderson and Butlers breakdown, chronicling Anderson’s further retreat into his own drug-addled world (the singer was addicted to heroin and crack ‘for years’). The last words Butler spoke to Anderson for nine long years were apparently ‘You're a fucking cunt.’ So it came as some surprise to hear that the duo had got back together, backed by a brand-new band, The Tears.

Suede were provocative. There was a time when Anderson would say rude things about America and make provocative statements about their sexuality ( Anderson has never been able to escape his infamous quip in which he claimed to be a ‘bisexual who had never had a homosexual experience’). The Tears, by contrast, are reassuringly conformist. On their album ‘Here Come The Tears’, launched last month, its clear that their trump card is the ‘power-ballad’ – the epic, sweeping, sing-along compositions that litter the album. It’s a trick they manage to pull off, however, with particular flair. ‘Refugees’, their first single from the album and a top ten UK hit, is simple stunning. At under three minutes long it’s guaranteed to have you hammering away at your stereo’s repeat button. Like ‘Fallen Idol’ and ‘The Lovers’, tracks charged with a similar emotional intensity, it’s a hymn to the worlds losers - the freaks and the misfits - exactly what Suede always did best.

Despite the album having been produced by Butler , it’s all very similar to the stuff that Suede came up with after the guitarist’s departure – very poppy, and sadly overproduced. The bleak, nihilistic atmosphere that clung around Dog Man Star is nowhere to be seen. It’s essentially music in the same mould as groups like Coldplay (or the even less credible, ruddy-cheeked singer-songwriter, Keane). Just mentioning The Tears in the same sentence as suitably humourless acts as Coldplay is evidence of the haemorrhage of credibility that Anderson and Butler have suffered in their new incarnation – The Tears are too intense, too emotional, too saccharine sweet to be considered a group with the cool of, say, Franz Ferdinand. Anderson ’s heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics are at times a little too cloying, too clumsy, making any comparisons to Morrissey rather laughable. It’s not an album pushing any musical boundaries, but it does push all the right buttons.

If comparisons to the Suede of old make The Tears look a little pale, then they certainly fare well when compared to Coldplay et al. They’re still infinitely cooler than the likes of Keane (then again, hardly a difficult feat). And they certainly come out smiling if you compare them to their Britpop stable-mates, Oasis, for example. The Gallagher machine had aged particularly badly in contrast to the glory days of ‘Definitely Maybe’, continuing to lumber onwards, churning out every increasingly bland and formulaic music to an ultra-loyal fan-base who would ensure that the sounds of Liam snorting cocaine would, if released, go straight to number one. Suede, by contrast, have retained much of their old magic.

It’s an admirable comeback which will leave old Suede fans soiling their trousers with excitement, and one which knocks their competition for six. The Independent newspaper already suggested that they might be ‘The most exciting new band in Britain , twice.’ Brace yourself – Butler and Anderson are back.