Here Come The Tears!
It's like Britpop all over again! A decade since the Roll With It/Country House Chart battle and the main protagonists are both back with summer albums. Oasis of course have Don't Believe The Truth and Blur Mainman Damon Albarn is behind the Gorillaz latest Demon Days. Better yet, both albums have been getting great reviews! Time will tell if the records live up to expectations but so far so good. But there's another record out a month later created by two Britpop luminaries. That record is Here Come The Tears.
The Tears, if you haven't heard, are Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, the joint creative powerhouse behind the best work of Britpops forgotten heroes Suede. "Forgotten heroes?" You ask, "Everyone's heard of bloody Suede!" True but all too often it's the soggy decline and fall that lingers in the memory, not how important, how special, they were at the beginning! They were the band that kick started Britpop when Blur were still chasing the Baggy scene! It was Brett on the cover of that iconic Select magazine cover, Union Jack behind him.(to be British and proud no longer made you racist, hurrah!) They took old, classic, British sounds and made them thrillingly modern, setting the template for the whole genre. But where were they in Britpop movie Live Forever? To be fair they may have been declined to be interviewed but they still deserved more than a token mention early on.
Because those records they made weren't just agenda setting they were brilliant. Epic, melodramatic, with Brett's voice always pitched somewhere between ecstasy and dispair. Received wisdom now has it that Britpop was a soft southern bastards society before Oasis came in and took over. All arty pretension, no Rock n' Roll soul. But listen again to the glam crunch of Metal Mickey. It's as thrilling as anything on Definately Maybe!
The debut was fine enough, but they followed it with their masterpiece. Dog Man Star is an epic album of melodramatic, wonder that deserves to be mentioned in hushed tones. Intricate and beautiful, full of fear, longing and sexual ambiguity, it ploughed it's own furrow while all around was laddism. Even the departure of Butler at the tail end of the Dog Man Star sessions didn't slow them down. At least not at first. Coming Up, their first album without Butler was full to bursting with glorious, shiney glam hits. After that it was sadly a case of diminishing returns.
So look out for The Tears. Early reports say they sound like...Suede! Or even better, dig out those old suede records and remember what it was like to find yourself swooning "Now your Animal's gone!"
The Tears, if you haven't heard, are Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, the joint creative powerhouse behind the best work of Britpops forgotten heroes Suede. "Forgotten heroes?" You ask, "Everyone's heard of bloody Suede!" True but all too often it's the soggy decline and fall that lingers in the memory, not how important, how special, they were at the beginning! They were the band that kick started Britpop when Blur were still chasing the Baggy scene! It was Brett on the cover of that iconic Select magazine cover, Union Jack behind him.(to be British and proud no longer made you racist, hurrah!) They took old, classic, British sounds and made them thrillingly modern, setting the template for the whole genre. But where were they in Britpop movie Live Forever? To be fair they may have been declined to be interviewed but they still deserved more than a token mention early on.
Because those records they made weren't just agenda setting they were brilliant. Epic, melodramatic, with Brett's voice always pitched somewhere between ecstasy and dispair. Received wisdom now has it that Britpop was a soft southern bastards society before Oasis came in and took over. All arty pretension, no Rock n' Roll soul. But listen again to the glam crunch of Metal Mickey. It's as thrilling as anything on Definately Maybe!
The debut was fine enough, but they followed it with their masterpiece. Dog Man Star is an epic album of melodramatic, wonder that deserves to be mentioned in hushed tones. Intricate and beautiful, full of fear, longing and sexual ambiguity, it ploughed it's own furrow while all around was laddism. Even the departure of Butler at the tail end of the Dog Man Star sessions didn't slow them down. At least not at first. Coming Up, their first album without Butler was full to bursting with glorious, shiney glam hits. After that it was sadly a case of diminishing returns.
So look out for The Tears. Early reports say they sound like...Suede! Or even better, dig out those old suede records and remember what it was like to find yourself swooning "Now your Animal's gone!"
posted by Chris Chopping @ 10:30 AM
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