(2021) Suede - Coming Up [25th Anniversary Edition]


Review:
2-CD edition featuring a bonus disc with seventeen B-sides. Brett Anderson carried on after Bernard Butler’s departure, adding a teenage guitarist and restructuring the intent of Suede, if not the sound, for their third album, Coming Up. The most striking thing about Coming Up is the simplicity. Gone are the grand, sweeping gestures of both Suede and Dog Man Star, leaving behind the glam, which is now spiked with an invigorating sense of self-belief — Anderson is out to prove that he’s a survivor, and he does give a damn whether you believe he is or not. So Coming Up has none of the lush, melancholy, and paranoid overtones of Dog Man Star. It’s about celebrating being young, going out, taking drugs, having sex, and living life. And it sounds just like it reads — Richard Oakes pounds out fizzy, fuzzy guitar riffs while the rhythm section lays back with dirty, sexy grooves and new keyboardist Neil Godling exudes a sultry, unattainable cool. Even on the wistful ballads “By the Sea” and “Picnic by the Motorway,” there’s none of the enveloping melancholy that consumed Dog Man Star — they’re as optimistic as the buoyant, melodic rockers that comprise the rest of the album. As a statement of purpose, Coming Up is unimpeachable. Though it doesn’t break any new ground for the band — unless you count the newfound sense of optimism — it’s a remarkable consolidation and crystallization of Suede’s talents and all the evidence anyone needs that Brett Anderson was always the guiding force behind the band.

***

The great value 2CD+DVD deluxe edition from 2011 seemed definitive, with its collection of demos, B-sides and video content, although the so-so packaging let it down a bit and there was the odd omission, such as the Neil Codling-penned flip-side, ‘Digging a Hole’. Five years later, the 20th anniversary 4CD+DVD set offered a better presentation, filled the odd gap, found more demos, but didn’t entirely supersede its predecessor. For example, the band decided to amicably separate Coming Up from a few songs that originally bridged the second and third albums and that had been included on the earlier reissue. These include ‘Together’ – the first fruit of the Brett Anderson/Richard Oakes writing partnership – and B-sides ‘Asda Town’ and ‘Bentswood Boys’. Despite having been written a few years earlier and being paired with Dog Man Star singles, these songs, in theory, have more in common with the 1996 album, since Bernard Butler was not involved in the creation of any of them. But it seems they aren’t considered close enough to Coming Up, and therefore reside in a Suede ‘No Man’s Land’ lying betwixt and between the two albums. No recent Suede deluxe edition has been willing to offer them refuge! Perhaps wisely, for this new, two-CD 25th anniversary treatment of Coming Up, Edsel have gone back to basics. There’s no demos, no videos, no live tracks just the album, paired with an CD of B-sides and extra tracks from Coming Up singles (17 in total). And those B-sides are ludicrously strong. In many ways, they tell the full story of the beginnings of the post-Bernard Butler era, in a way that the album, alone, can not. — SDE





Track Listing:
Disc 1:
1. Trash
2. Filmstar
3. Lazy
4. By The Sea
5. She
6. Beautiful Ones
7.Starcrazy
8. Picnic By The Motorway
9. The Chemistry Between Us
10. Saturday Night

Disc 2:
1. Europe Is Our Playground [original version]
2. Have You Ever Been This Low?
3. Another No One
4. Every Monday Morning Comes
5. The Sound Of The Streets
6. Young Men
7. Sam
8. Money
9. This Time
10. WSD
11. Jumble Sale Mums
12. These Are The Sad Songs
13. Feel
14. Sadie
15. Digging A Hole
16. Graffiti Women
17. Duchess


Media Report:
Genre: indie-pop, rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits