‘New Generation’ – Suede, 1994
The latest in a long line of faux-androgynous English guitar bands, Suede burst onto the scene with an image that threw Bowie and The Smiths together, with one of the best guitar players of his generation and a lead singer who would surely have been a hit in the PR industry if he had failed in music. Yes, Brett Anderson had all the right headlines, and Suede’s first singles – ‘Metal Mickey’, ‘The Drowners’, ‘Animal Nitrate’ – and their eponymous debut delivered on their promise.
But second-album syndrome can be a bitch, and the ruin of many bands. Think Stone Roses, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Strokes…Jesus, even The Clash and The Jam suffered from it.
Suede’s answer was to stick to a tried and true formula: soaring guitar anthems, with lyrics about, essentially, taking drugs to escape the grinding monotony of suburban life.
The tune crackles to life with Bernard Butler’s hard-edge guitar, the standout instrument on the Dog Man Star album. It’s heavily distorted, and not a million miles from Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust stomp-pomp.
Anderson does his usual shtick, dropping references to “all the boys in all the cities”, “catalogue town”, “breeding disease”, and suchlike. The key line here is probably Anderson’s chemical romance:
She and I will soon discover,
We take the pills and find each other
That line pretty much sums up Suede.
Of course, Butler left before this was released, so the video shows his replacement, 17-year-old Richard Oakes, playing the riff. And there were grander plans at work – while Suede had toured their first album, Oasis and Blur had adopted a more laddish, working-class sound that drew more on the Kinks and Jam than Bowie and Smiths, and soon Suede found themselves out of fashion. With grunge on one side and Britpop on the other, Suede were sent to the margins.
But for me, ‘New Generation’ is probably their high watermark, and they are an important group in the history of British music. Here’s the video for ‘New Generation’. Great music, but they were a big influence on my purchase of a way-too-tight black leather jacket and a pair of oxblood Doc Martens when I was 17. Thankfully, no photos survive.
Tags: Alternative / Indie
