Dog Man Star

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Bracewell, Michael (2 September 2008). "I'm surprised I made it to 30". The Guardian . Retrieved 27 July 2013. Sony, London Suede Look to Wear Down U.S. Resistance" (PDF). Billboard. Vol.106, no.38. 17 September 1994. p.22 . Retrieved 6 December 2018. Peak positions of Danish Albums Chart 1996-2000 " Top20.dk - Denmarks TOP 20 history". Coming Up, Sci-Fi Lullabies and Head Music, top20.dk. Retrieved on 22 July 2011.

Spitz, Marc (2009). Bowie: A Biography. New York City: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-71699-6. Cooper, Leonie (29 August 2014). "Suede to release 20th anniversary 'Dog Man Star' boxset". NME . Retrieved 9 December 2016.He's also dipping into Blake, the Romantic poet-seer whose 'visions' of a divided self, of a divided nation inform his writing. Blake's lines like, "With Sorrow fraught, My notes are driven; They strike the ear of night/ Make weep the eyes of day," are echoed by 'Daddy's Speeding''s "Sorrow turns his eyes to mine/ Sorrow breaks the silent day". And The Tyger's "water'd heaven with their tears" runs through Brett's "the tears of suburbia drowned the land".

From the moment Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler started to hone their songcraft, the seeds of Suede's second album, Dog Man Star were being sown. "It was always an album we knew we could make," say Anderson now. Early compositions like 'Pantomime Horse' and 'The Drowners' B-side 'To The Birds' are supremely confident structures, swelling to operatic climaxes, shifting gears like mini-symphonies. On 'Where The Pigs Don't Fly', the stop-start intro has an almost regal sense of presence. This was music with poise and purpose, music that demanded to be heard by a band that demanded to be seen. Onstage and in song, the pair had forged an almost telepathic, brotherly bond. According to Butler's recollections in John Harris' The Last Party, they smoked the same cigarettes, dressed identically, the concerned Butler would accompany Anderson home on the tube. The last four songs of Dog Man Star form an unsettling, self-contained cycle. From “The 2 Of Us” to “Still Life”, Anderson’s lyrics get as dark as the cityscapes of his delirium. Love is not merely doomed, but violent, addled and betrayed to the tunes of Butler’s twinkling piano. “The Asphalt World” is so obviously an attempt to write a gothic epic, but when it’s over, that premeditation doesn’t really matter. It’s still a gothic epic. Only in “Still Life”, a beautifully simple song that became the bombastic finale, does Anderson offer a glimmer of hope in the voice of an unloved housewife who vows to carry on fighting. Just like Suede, in fact. Suede’s sound has been compared to that of the Smiths as well as David Bowie, with many critics drawing attention to Brett Anderson’s dark and bleak depictions of British society. Bernard Butler’s guitar work also earned praise from critics, and the album has since gained a reputation as not only Suede’s best album (usually competing with their next, Dog Man Star) but also as one of the greatest records of the Britpop era. Has time mellowed Brett’s view of Britpop? No. “ As soon as we became aware of it,” he recounted to The Guardian in 2013, “We went away and wrote ‘Dog Man Star’. You could not find a less Britpop record. It’s tortured, epic, extremely sexual and personal. None of those things apply to Britpop.” Brett took divine inspiration I never listened to it at the time, and I can't quite muster the interest now. It's hard to want to engage with a record when the people who made it have pretty much told you they wish they hadn't have bothered. So I think I'll let the old mind drift…If the pair were in Anderson's words, "like two Siamese cats, fighting, two halves of the same whole" then the guitarist had the upper hand in this power struggle, the music took over. This posed something of a problem to the band's internal dynamic, according to Buller. "When the singer isn't singing, how do you justify the music? It all comes down to a band disagreeing about whether the singing should stop," he says now. Paphides, Pete (31 May 2012). "Follow-Up Albums: Suede – Dog Man Star". BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 23 November 2013.

a b "Mojo Presents Suede". Mojo. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013 . Retrieved 24 July 2013.Copsey, Rob (22 September 2020). "Mercury Prize: The best-selling winning albums". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 24 September 2022. a b c Jenkins, Mark (18 January 1995). "Just a 'Second,' 6 Years Later". The Washington Post . Retrieved 18 October 2018. Music critic Pete Paphides tells the story behind three 'follow-up' albums - from Dexys Midnight Runners, Fleetwood Mac and Suede - with tales of musical pressure, creative differences, personal politics and mixed results. Buller has said that Suede were rarely a unit in the studio during the album’s recording. Tensions between singer and guitarist were further frayed when Butler appeared on the cover of NME ’s sister magazine Vox , strapped with the words ‘Brett drives me insane’. Inside, he lamented, “[Brett] isn’t a musician at all. It’s very difficult for him to get around anything that isn’t ABC.” Anderson recalls reading the Vox interview the same morning he was recording the vocals for ‘The Asphalt World’. It served as unlikely inspiration for one of the singer’s career best performances. “I remember trying to channel all this hurt that I was feeling and the iciness I was feeling into the vocal,” he said. Butler walked out before the album was finished We were competing with the great records of the past; that's what we had to prove with it. I was trying to write without any boundaries. I was living in a bizarre house in north London, taking lots and lots of hallucinogenic drugs, and writing in a stream of consciousness about anything I wanted and pushing myself as an artist. Dog Man Star is a real testament to what you can create when you want to push yourself as far as you can go."

Promotion for the album took place in a somewhat lukewarm atmosphere. With the departure of one half of the song-writing partnership, fans and the music press had assumed that the band were finished. [12] Anderson and the remaining members were determined to continue on as normal and conducted press interviews to get the message across that the band were looking for a new guitarist; and that they were staying together, as Suede was the only thing they ever truly believed in. Promotion for the album started one month before its scheduled release with the band conducting interviews with the UK and American music press. The band recruited new guitarist Richard Oakes mid-September after hearing a tape of him playing "My Insatiable One" that he had sent to the band's fanclub. [68] Lead single "We Are the Pigs" was released 12 September peaking at 18 in the UK. [69] The choice of lead single had been a subject of debate, with Sony pressuring Anderson to release " New Generation" first for commercial reasons. [20] [70] [71] He was unwavering on the matter, putting his artistic beliefs ahead of business sense as he felt "We Are the Pigs" had the "drama and power" that represented the album's message. [72] He recalled: "I'd mis-read people's perception of the song. I'd lost my perspective on reality." [71] Bassist Mat Osman felt "The Wild Ones" should have been the first single, and said releasing "We Are the Pigs" was "commercial suicide." [73] The single was performed 22 September on Top of the Pops where Oakes made his first TV performance. The band played three dates in Paris early October, with Oakes making his live debut there before making his official UK debut at a secret fanclub show at Raw Club in London 10 October. [74]After a long and expensive recording span, A New Morning was released in 2002 and was a commercial and critical disappointment in the UK. The first single released from A New Morning, " Positivity", became the group's only single to chart in Canada, [11] and peaked at number one in Denmark. [3] Before 1995: " Sisältää Hitin - Finnish Charts since 1961: S8: STEP - SUE > Suede". suomenlistalevyt.blogspot.fi. Retrieved on 21 August 2015.