Suede : Deluxe Edition ［2CD+DVD］

Borrowing heavily from David Bowie and the Smiths, Suede forge a distinctively seductive sound on their eponymous album. Guitarist Bernard Butler has a talent for crafting effortlessly catchy, crunching glam hooks like the controlled rush of "Metal Mickey" and the slow, sexy grind of "The Drowners," but he also can construct grand, darkly romantic soundscapes like the sighing "Sleeping Pills" and the tortured "Pantomime Horse." What brings these elegant sounds to life is Brett Anderson, who invests them with bed-sit angst and seamy sex. Anderson's voice is calculatedly affected and theatrical, but it fits the grand emotion of his self-consciously poetic lyrics. Suede are working-class lads striving for glamour, and they achieve it by piecing together remnants of the past with pieces of the present, never forgetting the value of a strong hook in the process. And while the sound of Suede frequently recalls the peak of glam rock, its punk-influenced passion and self-conscious appropriation of the past make it thoroughly postmodern. Coincidentally, its embrace of trashy pop helped usher in an era of Brit-pop, but few bands captured the theatrical melancholy that gave Suede such resonance. [Edsel's 2011 expansion of Suede's debut defines the term generous, running two CDS and one DVD. The first disc contains a remastered version of the album expanded with demos of seven songs from the album and its B-sides, including "The Drowners" and "Metal Mickey," while the second disc rounds up the eight B-sides from the album -- including "My Insatiable One," "To the Birds," "He's Dead," and "Where the Pigs Don't Fly," all of which could fit comfortably on the finished album, something Brett Anderson argues within his liner notes -- and then six unreleased demos and outtakes including a cover of the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket," a piano version of "My Insatiable One," and "Just a Girl," an early recording made when Justine Frischmann was still in the band. The DVD has the promo clips for the album's singles -- including two versions of "The Drowners" -- the Love & Poison home video, a full concert from February 1993 in Sheffield, the band performing "Animal Nitrate" at the Brit Awards that same year, and then some retrospective interviews with the band.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|