Sci Fi Lullabies
NUDE
Ooh err, missus! Brett & co expose their backsides for posterior... sorry, posterity.
Croydon. Colchester. Haywards Heath. Saint Etienne. Blur. Suede. London's most devoted mythologisers rarely come from the city itself, but from the featureless hinterland towns where the pigs don't fly, 30 minutes away on Connex South East, close enough for the light pollution to drown the stars from the night sky, far enough away for the dull glow to seem exotic.
Ten years in London and still not bored, Brett Anderson jaywalks around the Capital in a zipped-up snorkel jacket, scanning the streets, gibbering stream-of-consciousness into a Dictaphone. These are the results. If his obsession with his adopted home is always implicit, then on 'Sci-Fi Lullabies' - the only B-side collection worth buying in pop history - it's tangible. Brett spends his days soaking up all the love and poison in London, and this is where he pours it all out.
There's a story going round about a famous band - no names, but let's say they share a certain historic rivalry with Suede - who were touring Europe recently when they got a call from their record company HQ. "We need a few B-sides. We've booked you into a studio in Barcelona tomorrow afternoon. Can you bash 'em out?"
Among many other things, 'Sci-Fi Lullabies', a 27-song, two-CD anthology (missing only 'Dolly', 'Sam' and 'Painted People') is a testament to the fact that Suede never, ever "bash 'em out". From the beginning, when 'My Insatiable One' and 'To The Birds' were as talked - about as 'The Drowners' (and, for that matter, any record in that week's Top Ten), Suede's quality control department has ensured that the very term 'B-side' sounds too small, too insulting. Buy a Suede single, and you'll find no oldie hits from Glasgow Barrowlands, no Dave fucking Angel mixes, no crap Velvet Underground covers. You'll find songs.
And the songs on this immensely listenable secret history, much more than Suede's proper, public catalogue, show a cohesion and unity between the clothes-by-Oxfam days and the Oakes / Codders present. They never faltered (Richard Oakes' first effort, 'Together' is one of the sexiest tracks here), and the whole thing hangs together so well, you almost suspect they always planned it.
With their forlorn minor keys, painted in the washed-out watercolours rather that the primary aerosols and neons of, say, 'Trash', these songs epitomise that Sunday morning feeling - drizzle on the panes and nothing on TV. The cast of characters, like the mood, is consistent; untouchable princesses, lawless street scum and gracelessly absurd freaks. The escalator-riding leotard freak of 1992 and 1997's sad cowboy impersonator on a hilltop are, surely, one and the same.
There are anomalies. In this bittersweet melancholic context, the shuddering robot boogie of 'Killing Of A Flash Boy' - Brett barking indecent insults through a Hi De Hi tannoy - sounds freakishly priapic, erect and swaggering, as do the serrated nu-wave of 'Money' that attacks XTC with a nail-gun, and the final, hidden track (imagine Mark E Smith seizing the mic at a Deep Purple reunion). Like any other band, Suede use their B-sides to experiment - with its ominous dub undercarriage, 'W.S.D' (it stands for "we're so disco") sounds like Sly & Robbie with their sensi switched for amyl - but unlike any other band, this isn't a synonym for 'being crap'.
Brett takes his eye off the ball just once. 'Duchess' is lazy rubbish: "Shee knows lateenos, and shee knows Mexi-cans..." (and there is, it must be said, a certain ambiguity in hearing Brett Anderson, in 1994, singing: "Where's all the money gone? / I'm talking to you / All up the hole in your arm / Is the needle a much better screw? "). Mostly, though, freed from the tight-arsed, trying-too-hard task of making hit singles, Brett relaxes and lets out some of his best, and funniest, lines. How about "Tony only reads Asian Babes / Danny's doing Doves down the raves... Les says punk isn't dead / Mick is not impeccably bred" or the simple, but perfect "Jumble sale mums / What are they on?".
The man who is tired of Suede B-sides is tired of life.
Typed in by Allan Crooks.