Suede man's epic fall from grace

(Morning Star, Friday 30 March 2007)

ALBUM: Brett Anderson - Brett Anderson
(Vital)

POISE is everything. Pretension, or the appearance of being pretentious, is key in pop.

In the heady days of the early 1990s, indie bands looked like Fraggles. The sartorially and intellectually challenged days of baggy left a sour taste in the mouths of music fans looking for more grace and style. They were looking for Suede.

Four whey-faced, fey, wasted indie kids with their roots in Thatcher's grim Britain, Suede shone a light on the bleak streets of modern Britain.

Theirs was a kingdom of urban wastelands and adolescent ankle sock dramas and, with well-read Brett Anderson at the helm, they offered intelligent pop for the disaffected youth unable to identify with the likes of the great unwashed superstars of grunge Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder.

So, Anderson has earned his stripes as a forerunner and a pioneer. He formed one half of probably the greatest songwriting partnership of the 1990s and gave nothing but sensational column inches for a music press foaming at the mouth for an erudite, self-aware frontman.

It's a bit of a shame that it's come to this for the great man, his first solo effort.

In fairness, his voice is still unique and attention-grabbing, if you like that sort of thing. He drags the emotion out of every note on debut single Love is Dead and, elsewhere, his singing sits well with the predominantly slow-paced tracks.

The real letdown here is, sorry to say, the lyrics. Dust and Rain plumbs new depth with its "I am the needle, you are the vein," while the less said about The More We Possess The Less We Own Of Ourselves, the better.

The strangely familiar chiming guitars of Intimacy bring back the Suede tingle, but the "Intimacy, I want you to be part of me" refrain is a little nauseating.

From such incredible stock, Anderson's made the leap to peddling sixth form poetry, becoming a slightly embarrassing earnest songwriter. Is it even earnest? Maybe he thinks this is how he should write.

It would be churlish to deny Anderson was ever prone to a little pretension.