Impress loves....
Suede is synonymous with the nineties. The combination of Brett Anderson’s vocals and Bernard Butler’s reverb-crazed guitar dressed in the Peter Saville-designed imagery which typified the renaissance of magazine trash-art culture (ID, Dazed & Confused et al) proved an intoxicating mix and stardom duly arrived. The cracks inevitably appeared and Butler fled the nest, leaving Anderson to carry the torch to the wide-eyed myspace generation - who fell at his feet.
I always associate Suede with London; perhaps it is the video to Saturday Night, the memories of The Cadogan Hotel and an unfulfilled love, escalators and tube trains. Art mirrors life mirrors art and all that…. They were giddy times under “nuclear skies”, but we all try and grow up and Brett Anderson is no exception. His first solo album has just been released revealing a softer man, a mature songwriter with a retrospective eye on his own life and an inner confidence with little to prove.
Peter Saville still designs the artwork and the voice maintains the vulnerable, boyish traits that make it unmistakeably his - no-one else in the world sings like Brett Anderson. More piano than guitar chords, sometimes whimsical, always emotive and provoking, Brett has produced an album in parallel with his (and perhaps my own) life. I will always adore most of Suede’s work, But Impress really does love the debut album from Brett Anderson.
www.brettanderson.co.uk
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