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Rating: Having grown up musically wrapped in abrasive flannel shirts, the feats of brit-pop in the past decade always left me indifferent, if not irritated by much of their emptiness. However, I must admit that I've always had a soft spot for early Suede.
Brett Anderson, despite his arrogance and a considerable slap-worthy face, knew how to write perfect pop songs, best synthesizing the words of his great inspirers (from Bowie to Japan, obviously passing through the Smiths). Furthermore, the imagery evoked by his lyrics, inspired by novels like "Territori londinesi" or "Time’s arrow" by Martin Amis and the complete works of Hanif Kureishi, transcended the banal dimension of the little song in much of the Albion's musical production of the period. London and the loneliness of its suburbs, its streets crossed by fast cars driven by dissolute characters seeking redemption, elegant women (how many times does Brett whisper that phoneme, "She...") with their ambiguous habits, both sexual and chemical: all of this the quartet's music seemed the perfect soundtrack. Notoriously the core of Suede's art resides in the first album: one of the best UK-labeled of the '90s, with gems like "Pantomime horse", "She's not dead" and "So young".
"Dog man star" was its worthy successor, but it marked the end of the ride: indeed, the talented guitarist Bernard Butler, the musical deus ex machina, left his companions emulating his idol Johnny Marr with recordings already completed, and from then the London group's career embarked on a tunnel with no exit.
This album was among the most ambitious in the United Kingdom of the last decade: a true baroque delirium, because to the already known glam-dramatic component, sumptuous arrangements were added to give the work an epic character. There are no shortages of crystalline pop numbers, like the atmospheric "The wild ones", the twilight "The two of us" or the tender "The power". But the moments that define the magnificence of the album lie elsewhere, in the obliquity of certain scores where it seems to hear the totem Bowie raped by Phil Spector (the tortuous "Daddy's speeding", which flirts with the James Dean myth, the grand "New Generation"), while in "The asphalt world" and "Still life" the alchemy unfortunately sounds bombastic rather than grand. The rock and roll canons of a "The drowners" instead are found in the lively "We are the pigs", "This Hollywood life" and "Heroine", where Butler is always leading the dance, among the emphatic vocals of Anderson.
The symbolic song is probably "Black or blue", a syrupy love song set against a backdrop of a degraded London, searching for a way out towards Heathrow. A bit over the top, just like the whole career of the band has been.
Ultimately "Dog man star" was a controversial album, certainly full of gaps but endowed with great personality. Managing to emphasize the most controversial aspects of their aesthetic (existential languor, the kitsch exacerbation of the glam factor, the brazen and romantically formal decadence) while minimally affecting expressive urgency is the prerogative of great bands.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 We Are the Pigs (04:19)
Well the church bells are calling
Police cars on fire
And as they call you to the eye of the storm
All the people say "Stay at home tonight"
I say we are the pigs, we are the swine
We are the stars of the firing line
And as the smack cracks at your window
You wake up with a gun in your mouth
Oh let the nuclear wind blow away my sins
And I'll stay at home in my house
I say, we are the pigs
we are the swine
we are the stars of the firing line
But deceit can't save you so
We will watch them burn
03 Heroine (03:22)
She walks in beauty like the night
Discarding her clothes in the plastic flowers
Pornographic and tragic in black and white
My Marilyn come to my slum for an hour
I'm aching to see my heroine
I'm aching been dying for hours and hours
She walks in the beauty of a magazine
Complicating the boys in the office towers
Rafaella or Della the silent dream
My Marilyn come to my slum for an hour
I'm aching to see my heroine
I'm aching been dying for hours and hours,
been dying for hours and hours
She walks in beauty like the night
Hypnotising the silence with her powers
Armageddon is bedding this picture alright
My Marilyn come to slum for an hour
I'm aching to see my heroine
Aching, been dying for hours and hours
I'm 18, I need my heroines
Aching, been dying for hours
Oh and I'm never alone now
Now I'm with her
05 Daddy's Speeding (05:21)
Whiplash caught the silver son
Took the film to No. I
Crashed the car and left us here
Broken glass for teenage boys trapped in steel and celluloid
Crashed the car and left us here.
And daddy burned a million eyes
Dared the dogs to criticise
He crashed the car and I was born
And daddy turned a million heads
Took the teenage dream to bed
He crashed the car and left us here
With dreams of gasoline drying our eyes
Green fields of destiny high in the sky
But oh can you see him?
Oh Daddy's speeding
Whiplash caught the silver son
Killed the sad American
Crashed the car and left us here
And sorrow turns his eyes to mine
Come with me now it's your time
Let's crash the car and I'll be born
And sorrow breaks the silent day
Takes the teenage boys away
They crash the cars and leave us here
With dreams of gasoline drying our eyes
Green fields and death machines high in the sky
But oh can you see him?
Oh,Daddy's speeding
06 The Power (04:31)
Through endless Asia, through the fields of Cathay
or enslaved in pebble-dash grave with a kid on the way
If you're far over Africa on the wings of youth
or if you're down in some satellite town and there's nothing you can do
Just give me, give me, give me the power
And I'll make them bleed
Give me, give me the power
(Although I'm just the common breed)
You might live in a screen kiss, it's a glamorous dream
Or belong to a world that's gone, it's the English disease
But give me, give me the power
And I'll make them bleed
Give, give me, give me the power
(Although I'm just the common breed)
07 New Generation (04:37)
I wake up every day to see her back again
Screaming my name through the astral plane
And in this catalogue town she takes me down
Down through the platinum spires
Down through the telephone wires
And we shake it around in the underground
And like a new generation rise
And like all the boys in all the cities
I take the poison, take the pity
But she and I, we soon discovered
we'd take the pills to find each other
Oh but when she is calling here in my head
Can you hear her calling
And what she has said?
Oh but when she is calling here in my head
It's like a new generation calling
Can you hear it call?
And I'm losing myself, losing myself to you
I wake up every day, to find her back again
Breeding disease on her hands and knees
While the styles turn and the books still burn
Yes it's there in the platinum spires
It's there in the telephone wires
And we spread it around to a techno sound
But like a new generation rise
Cos like all the boys in all the cities
I take the poison, take the pity
But she and I we soon discover
We take the pills to find each other
Oh but when she is calling here in my head
Can you hear her calling?
And what she has said?
Oh but when she is calling here in my head
It's like a new generation calling
Can you hear her call?
And I'm losing myself, losing myself to you
10 Black or Blue (03:48)
there was a girl who flew the world from a lonely shore
through southern snow to Heathrow to understand the law
there was a boy who loved noise of the underground
he left the coast and overdosed on that London sound
he said: "I don't care if you're black or blue
me and the stars stay up for you
I don't care who's wrong or right
and I don't care for the U.K. tonight
so stay, stay"
and then one day she moved away from those garden walls
she left some flowers, he smoked for hours
she understood the law
I don't care if you're black or blue
me and the stars stay up for you
I don't care who's wrong or right
and I don't care for the U.K. tonight
so stay, stay
There was a girl who flew the world
11 The Asphalt World (09:25)
I know a girl she walks the asphalt world
She comes to me and I supply her with Ecstasy
Sometimes we ride in a taxi to the ends of the city
Like big stars in the back seat like skeletons ever so pretty
I know a girl she walks the asphalt world
But where does she go?
And what does she do?
And how does she feel when she's next to you?
And who does she love in time honored fur?
Is it me or her?
I know a girl she walks the asphalt world
She's got a friend, they share mascara I pretend
Sometimes they fly from the covers to the winter of the river
For these silent stars of the cinema
It's in the blood stream, it's in the liver
I know a girl, she walks the asphalt felt world
But where does she go?
And what does she do?
And how does she feel when she's next to you?
And who does she love in time-honored fur?
Is it me or is it her?
With ice in her blood
And a Dove in her head
Well how does she feel when she's in your bed?
When you're there in her arms
And there in her legs
Well I'll be in her head
Cuz that's where I go
And that's what I do
And that's how it feels when the sex turns cruel
Yes both of us need her, this is the asphalt world
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By RinaldiACHTUNG
Brett introduces the band and Dog Man Star in an intro that reminds me of a certain Sgt. Pepper, bewildered and hopeful that the century will end crushed by violent hands.
While the world ends, ... we look out the window at the cars speeding by like they were insects, and we wonder: is this inert life really all I own?
