Suede: 30th Anniversary (Half-Speed Master Edition)

限定180gアナログ30周年エディション!LP盤はポリ裏地付きのインナースリーブに収められ、帯と4ページの小冊子がインサート。1993年3月にリリースされたスウェードのセルフ・タイトルのデビュー作は批評的にも商業的にも成功を収め、全英アルバムチャート1位を獲得、名誉あるマーキュリー・ミュージック・プライズの年間最優秀アルバム賞を受賞。クラシック・シングル「ザ・ドラウナーズ」「アニマル・ニトレート」「ソー・ヤング」「メタル・ミッキー」を収録。プロデューサーのエド・ブラーの監修のもと、オリジナルの1/2インチテープとプロダクションマスターからAIRでフィル・キンレイドによって新たにマスタリングされたエディション!

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. Andersons 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 Britpop, but few bands captured the theatrical melancholy that gave Suede such resonance. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine