good shout on Another No-One
I had a flurry of second-hand cassettes around this time where I was never sure if they were supposed to sound like that or whether it was some kind of wearing of the cassette - Dog Man Star, The Holy Bible etc. On The Holy Bible you could hear Side B tracks in the background of Side A. That must have been the latter but I’ve never confirmed.
By comparison i had Coming Up on CD and it was the polar opposite, all ultra-sleek, clean, trebly.
Incidentally, I think the reason I’ve never got on board with the comeback material is that Butler and Anderson balanced the melodrama so well, both almost battling to dominate songs. When it’s just Anderson’s melodrama (which was definitely toned down or more quirky on Coming Up, Head Music, even A New Morning) it doesn’t work as well (for me), not to take anything away from the rest of Suede.
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I remember Suede had a really weird Be Here Now-like hold over the music press (and industry) around that time.
I guess it was an odd period post-Britpop, pre-NYC indie.
She’s In Fashion was all over the radio too. Ubiquitous.
I think there’s a few decent ballads on it.
They had a primetime documentary about the making of it on channel 4 at the time. Adverts on the side of busses… bizarre stuff. It got bloody amazing reviews at the time as well .
Haha yeah. I doubt any of this stuff was helping Anderson’s headspace at the time. Think he’s on record saying he lost the run of himself.
Who else could go on MTV and play not one but two B-Sides
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Head Music is uneven but it has Indian Strings, which is one of their absolute best songs.
Seconding the surprising quality of Night Thoughts, it’s really great.
Big fan of this in-store too, Brett is cracking up throughout
Yeah, that’s right, it was all over the radio at the time but it wasn’t a very big hit (number 14 i think).
It was highly anticipated after the success of ‘Coming Up’ and it was quite a long wait (3 years). Virgin Megastore even changed their name to ‘Head Music’ the week it was released!
I was pretty psyched for it myself, I remember reading at one point that they were making some kind of sequel to Dog Man Star or that it was going to follow the aesthetic of ‘Europe Is Our Playground’.
I love Still Life.
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Same. Sounds great live too, despite seeming like it couldn’t be replicated.
Probably no higher than third best song on Dog Man Star though.
That recent doc that was on Sky Arts was brilliant on this era of suede. Some incredible footage (for all the wrong reasons) of them jamming song ideas in Brett’s flat. Brett was out of his fucking tree.
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Pre-Britpop surely?
Legends.
This came on shuffle last night at 4 am and cooled and refreshed my brain from the heatwave better than any ice cold shower:
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Love this song so much. 
Love Suede and the melodrama of Dog Man Star was so perfect for teenage me (and me now tbf).
The best b-sides of any band ever.
Also the Tears provided me with one of my all time favourite gig memories. Was slightly too young to see Suede with Bernard so being at the Leadmill watching Bernard and Brett do Living Dead together was so special.
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Head Music specifically
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