Suede – Dog Man Star (1994)

Normally, when people talk about Suede, they compare the debut album and Coming Up and most people find their favourite Suede album in one of these two. To me, Dog Man Star is the best Suede album. It has Bernard Butler's fabulous guitars on it, it's glam, it's dark, it's innovative. It doesn't have as many hits as the other two albums, but the long artistic songs towards the end of the album are what make this album the best one for me. Even the album cover looks cooler. I wasn't always of this opinion though. For a long time, I mostly just knew Suede through their compilation album and I didn't really know all the individual songs found on the albums. Dog Man Star wasn't that well represented on the compilations, which meant that I didn't even know what I was missing. Nowadays, Dog Man Star is one of the greatest albums of the 90s on my personal list.

I can pinpoint a moment when Dog Man Star became my favourite Suede album. Me and one of my best friends were driving to Ruka, a skiing village up north of Finland, to do some snowboarding. It's about 12 hour drive there from Helsinki and we had plenty of time to listen to music. This was probably the first time I really listened to the whole Dog Man Star from start to finish really paying attention to all the songs. It really got to me. Whenever I thought one of the songs had been the greatest one on the album, a better one came along. Well, maybe not always better, but still it was surprising that there were so many amazing songs on the album. Some people call this album bloated and pretentious. Sure, it has strong theatrical sound and the lyrics are personal and sexual, but all of those things are just positive things to me. This album shows a band who's not trying to be what they're expected to be, but doing what they want to do and what they do best.

The album starts with an intro song called Introducing the Band. It's an echoey mantra-like song that keeps growing throughout, clearly leading to some explosive moment when the album really starts. There are psychedelic vibes in this song. The intro is followed by the biggest hit on the album and one of my all time favourite Suede songs, We Are the Pigs. The guitars are absolutely phenomenal in this song. You can hear them just floating around with multiple recordings zooming in and out with so much air and ease that it's difficult to comprehend. Next up, is the second hit song of the album, Heroine, which I think has also something to do with the drug as well as the other, slightly differently spelled, meaning of the word. The chorus is delightfully catchy. The Wild Ones shows a completely different kind of Suede. It starts with beautiful echoey vocals of Brett Anderson and the whole song just floats away like a lazy Saturday filled with sun. Daddy's Speeding is the first of many artsy and dark ballads on this album that set this album apart from the band's more mainstream efforts. The looming feel of the song is amazingly beautiful. The Power has acoustic guitars that sound really fresh after all those electric guitars. I have to give a special note about the bass lines in this song. They're fantastic. New Generation has a pounding rhythm that interrupts the easygoing chain of ballads. This song is also a clear hit, but for some reason it's never mentioned amongst the Suede hits. The chorus is really catchy and the guitars again are so masterful I can only listen in awe. This Hollywood Life continues the harsher sounds and rock attitude. There's great amount of kick in the guitars. Then it's time to go back to the ballads. The 2 Of Us is mainly just Brett Anderson's sweet vocals and a beautiful piano. It reminds me of some later solo stuff of his, but it was rarely as good as this. The song grows beautifully towards the end. Black or Blue has some excellent falsettos and there's one of the most impressive theatrical growth pathways in any song. The Asphalt World brings back some more rhythmic action, but the tempo still stays slow. If the previous couple of songs were about Anderson's vocals, this song features Butler's amazing guitar-work. The album ends beautifully with an orchestrated song Still Life, which has amazing explosive ending filled with strings, horns and other classical instruments.

I'm posting the video for The Wild Life here just because it's one of the most 90s videos out there. There are some artificial neon colours over a landscape, a wind machine, motionless still pictures and amazingly 90s outfits. Suede has always been a good visual band as well as a great musical band. Their album covers, videos and promotional materials seem to really fit together while they're different. It was great seeing Suede live at the Alexandra Palace a few years ago. They used their single covers as backgrounds for their show and it made me appreciate their artwork even more.

I'm not entirely sure why I like Dog Man Star more than any other Suede song, but I think it has something to do with its intimate and dark mood. I like my music melancholic and I always seem to prefer songs that sound like they're played for a small intimate audience rather than a stadium full of people. Dog Man Star manages at the same time be really bloated with amazing orchestrations and sound so intimate that it's like it was being played for the lonely figure on its album cover.

Listen to the album on Spotify.