Suede
Dog Man Star 30th Anniversary Edition
★★★★★
DEMON
Speculation about Suede’s future after Bernard Butler’s departure drew significant focus from Dog Man Star’s contents on its release in October 1994. Introducing The Band’s unholy chant suggested they had prematurely accelerated into their Thomas Jerome Newton era, yet for all their second album’s insular paranoia, Suede were grappling with something bigger than themselves.
Letting their psychedelic side run with the dogs – Brett Anderson immersed in Lewis Carroll, William Blake and “an awful lot of acid” – they picked through the ’90s dystopian debris, turning up the nightmare filter on We Are The Pigs, rising from the ashes on New Generation. The ballads raised eyebrows, but Still Life’s orchestral meltdown now seems central to their quest for grandeur in a degraded word. This expanded 30thanniversary reissue supplements the magic with such intrigues as a Francophone The Power and excellent B-sides (Killing Of A Flash Boy especially). In losing themselves, they found something feral, stellar, extraordinary.
Dog Man Star 30 is out 18 October on Demon.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade
Tracklisting:
CD1
Introducing The Band
We Are The Pigs
Heroine
The Wild Ones
Daddy’s Speeding
The Power
New Generation
This Hollywood Life
The 2 Of Us
Black Or Blue
The Asphalt World
Still Life
CD2
My Dark Star
The Living Dead
Stay Together [long version]
Killing Of A Flash Boy
Whipsnade
This World Needs A Father
Modern Boys
Eno’s Introducing The Band
CD3
La Puissance (The Power)
The Living Dead [piano version]
We Believe in Showbiz [unreleased at time of recording]
Still Life [orchestral version]
The Wild Ones [original unedited version]
The Asphalt World [original unedited version]
Stay Together (Single Version)
NME Flexi
Picture: Kevin Cummins