June 12, 1999

Suede : She's in fashion

[B]'She's In Fashion'[/B] is a balmy, barmy beaut, shimmering grooves turning a blithe eye to the world, as [B]Brett Anderson[/B] waxes lyrical balderdash about some wench he spotted pricing spuds in

Gawd luv 'em, they just don't care. Nearly ten years of singing the same songs, wearing the same clothes, striking the same poses, and Suede's resolve remains ironclad, unbreachable. While others D OK, Blur D succumb and concede that the damn Yankees may have had a point after all, this lot hunker down in their Anderson shelter and throw another Roxy Music album
on
the fire.

The thing is, they've suddenly become fantastically good at it. The improvement curve instituted by Neil Codling's arrival has
by
now swept away all traces of the self-conscious mal viveur schtick that rendered previous flights of fantasy so crushingly mundane,
and
perhaps ushered along something akin to a sense of humour. Soused
in
acoustic guitar'd empathy, with a vaporous keyboard motif inescapably reminiscent of Duran Duran's 'Save A Prayer', 'She's In Fashion' is a balmy, barmy beaut, shimmering grooves turning a blithe eye to the world, as Brett Anderson waxes lyrical balderdash about some wench he spotted pricing spuds in Waitrose: "She's as similar as you can get/To the shape of a cigarette". Yok. For a man whose voice and metrical acumen have long been the toast of indie karaoke sessions across the land, Anderson has finally sussed that no-one is better qualified to parody himself than he.

Even the title seems suspiciously like a joke, suggesting 'She's In Parties' by Bauhaus, another band derided in their time as crap, mirthless Bowie replicants. But hey, we've got Gay Dad for that now. Suede, meantime, they're
working
on a suntan.

JAMES OLDHAM