Suede

Coming Up (1996)

C.M. Crockford

Q: So

what exactly are bands meant to do when the guitarist leaves, only a

vocal cult likes your new, weird album, and you seem down and out?

A: Get

another player, start it all up again, and make some chartstorming

hits.

Coming Up

was the initiation of the new era of Suede, with a replacement for

Bernard Butler in lead guitarist Richard Oakes and additional member

Neil Codling. Suede 2.0 was even glossier, hookier, louder than the

previous Suede (who lest we forget did have Brett Anderson

ecstatically swinging a mic against his ass), and had a remarkable

sense of pop as standard by which all should be judged. The songs

here are catchy, swaggering, and large:

nothing is small-scale. There's no deeply solemn art rock a la

“Daddy's Speeding” on the previous record, no creepy chanting.

Coming Up

is the soundtrack of British hedonism circa 1996: the yuppies,

council estate teens, druggies, and celebrities all united beyond

class and social strata under the goal of having a good time.

And

what a great soundtrack. Coming

Up

especially in its more euphoric singles, as Codling's keyboards surge

on “Filmstar” for example, reaches a pinnacle of bubblegum glam.

Everything is heightened, churned into a single candy-coated album

mix by Ed Buller. Anderson's voice is higher than it's ever been on

the gleefully anthemic “Trash” for example, finding liftoff in

the final chorus syllable: “We're the litter on the breeze/We're

the lovers on the streets /Just trash, me and you/It's in everything

we dooooooo”. Subtlety was rarely in the band's vocabulary anyway,

but Coming Up

laughs at the whole concept of going small. Strings, large backbeats,

and attacking guitar compete for space on pseudo-Bondian song “She”,

and the result is as exhausting as it is exhilarating. It's the rock

equivalent of an excellent blockbuster that all but begs for you to

love it.

Still

at its best Coming

Up

has a balance of joy and melancholia just as 70's glam secretly did.

(Is there a more poignant rock song about sexual confusion than

“Drive In Saturday”?) This is still at its core music by

outsiders who happen to be allowing a few more people into the fold.

“By The Sea” is a haunting piano ballad where the couple look

forward to their suicide, as Brett Anderson warmly sings “He can

walk out anytime across the sand, into the sea, into the brine.”

Not quite cocktail party stuff.

But

my favorite song here is one of their masterpieces, “The Chemistry

Between Us” - Richard Oakes as a guitar player was never better,

his luxurious and melodic riffs finding a bittersweet (heh) ecstasy

on the dance floor. “Between Us” in sound is somewhere between

Fifties retro-glam and Judy Garland, the La-la-la vocals floating

through thin air – when Brett sings “We are young and not tired

of it”, it's utterly triumphant and utterly pitiful just as the

best pop ballads can be. The narrator wonders openly about whether

they and their lover are too old for this shit, maybe “just capital

flash/in a stupid love”. “Class A, Class B/Is that the only

chemistry between us?” Anderson croons, the song spiralling towards

a come-down, Oakes' guitar surrendering to fluttering strings and

blissful surrender.

The

closer “Saturday Night” is the hangover to the faded and fucked

up highlights of the album, as the narrator promises “Whatever

makes her happy, whatever makes it alright” to their depressed

significant other. Like the song with the same title by The Blue

Nile, Saturday night holds totemic meaning here, and all these

British working class kids can do is put all of their hope into that

time, with its grand promise of a good time. The album finishes on

that sad note, a perfect pop album cut short by the intrusion of

reality.

Spawning

several chart hits in England, Coming

Up

was a commercial peak for Suede as a band and their last truly great

record for awhile. They had several hits with the next two albums,

but this would be their best work until their (excellent) reunion.

It's an exuberant, playful pop/rock album, delighted in the young and

vibrant world it lives in. There's nothing else I can ask of pop

music.