Search - Suede :: Coming Up

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew McCaffrey | Satellite of Love, Maryland | 06/06/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"COMING UP is the third album released by Suede and the first one to be recorded completely without their original guitarist, Bernard Butler. It's a lot more glam, a lot louder and a lot more fun than their albums that came before it. Unlike the mostly soulful music that they had been producing up to this point, this CD would be quite at home playing on your car stereo on the way to a trashy club or a disco. It's not dancing music, but it's definitely party music. The music is intense and noisy. The lyrics are rhythmic and effective. It combines the right amounts of David Bowie and T. Rex while still managing to drag the remains of the previous Suede kicking and screaming into the mix. It's fast in all the right places and slow when it needs to be. Brett Anderson has a real knack for creating lyrics that sound like they were born out of the music rather than just being tacked on afterwards. The result is that his voice almost sounds like another musical instrument at times rather than just a vessel to deposit words in. It's just icing on the cake that the words he has come up with are wonderful at describing the various scenes of alternating decadence and depravity. It's bubble-gum, it's loud, it's dirty and it's wonderful. Very few bands could get away with writing fun songs about drug-addicted ravers and teenagers sniffing glue, but Suede succeeds with flying colours. Highly recommended."

Bouncing back with Coming Up

Ben Elliss | Reading, UK | 05/23/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A fantastic return to form from a fantastic band! With this album, Suede proved all their detractors wrong and simply blew away the critics by producing ten of the best rock/pop tracks for years. The singles from the album speak for themselves - the glorious, dewy-eyed 'Trash', the melancholy 'Saturday Night', the glam-tastic 'Film Star' and the utterly unmatched 'Beautiful Ones' - with tracks like these, the album almost sounds like a Best Of. Lyrically, Brett reaches a peak here, culminating in the superb poetry of 'Beautiful Ones' ('cracked up, stacked up, twenty-two, psycho for sex and glue, lost it to Bostik') in which all the images and ideas of the last two albums are perfectly sharpened and distilled.Coming Up also showcases the musical ability of nineteen-year-old Richard Oakes, who coolly brushes aside the guitar-hero posturing of Bernard Butler to bring about a tighter, pared-down sound focusing on songs rather than solos and injecting the band with a new energy.Never has a band faced such adversity and bounced back so convincingly. Suede are heroes."

Up and Coming...

Avery Auer | Los Angeles, CA | 03/08/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I almost died last night around midnight. What happened was this: I was driving home, I switched on the radio, and caught the last few lines of "Lazy." By Suede. In America. On ...... After regaining control of my car, I cranked the volume and milked that moment for all it was worth. You see, prior to that instant, I came from a land of No Doubt and Soundgarden. Of Pearl Jam and Sheryl Crow. A land where the radio stations do not play The London Suede at midnight, or at any other time of the day. Perhaps this could be attributed to the fact that most Americans have tended to prefer less subtlety in lyrics, less eccentricity in style, and more good ol' fashioned "let-me-spell-it-out-for-you" noise. In other words, Americans just didn't "get" Suede. But last night, to the gloriously indulgent tune of "Lazy," something changed. Last month, Suede (known officially as "The London Suede" due to a legal snarl so ridiculous we shan't bother with it here) released their third LP, entitled "Coming Up". Upon its September 1996 European release, the album entered the UK charts at #1. "Coming Up" is nothing short of a smugly stunning, glamorously heart-wrenching slice of pure genius. And to each fair-weather fan who jumped ship alongside Suede's former guitarist, Bernard Butler, it was a smack in the smirking face. Seventeen-year-old replacement guitarist Richard Oakes didn't merely fill Butler's shoes; he kicked them aside and helped bring Suede to a level not at all anticipated by even the most faithful devotees. This is not to say, however, that Suede wasn't always a brilliant band. Just one sadly overlooked in the wake of more "mainstream" Brits like Spice Girls and Bush. From day one, they refused to sacrifice their delightful originality in order to cater to the demands of the typically more "commercial" American market. Gulping down the entire 43 minutes of "Coming Up" is like taking the whirl of your life on an adjectival roller coaster. The album opens with a jubilantly explosive track entitled "Trash". It is simply impossible to listen to this song and not revel in its enthusiasm for being young and wild and free. The ripe campiness of Brett Anderson's vocals, combined with an Oakes attack of musical wizardry, manages to deliver a track you won't mind having stuck in your head for a week. The mischievousness of "Filmstar" will steer you through "Lazy" with a grin that will suddenly drown in the numinous serenity of "By the Sea". But don't dust yourself off quite yet. You've still to grind through the gutter with "She," swagger through the glittery drama of "Beautiful Ones," and churn through a womb of angst in "The Chemistry Between Us". By the time you've reached the album's 10th and final track, you'll be spent just enough to drift peacefully through the intoxicatingly romantic "Saturday Night". Unlike too many of their peers, Suede has refused to sell out. Maybe this is the reason why for so long they remained strangers to American radio. For five years they've waited patiently for Americans to "get" it. This is why last night, I almost crashed my car; because I guess, finally, someone got it."