March 28, 1999

Head Music

Brett Anderson feels real when he's walking like a woman, talking like a Stone Age man....

7 / 10 Brett Anderson feels real when he's walking like a woman, talking like a Stone Age man. It's true! He feels schizo, ever so psycho. He knows a woman who's as stupid as a mouse and - brilliant - she lives in a house. What's she cooking him? Some crack, of course. Ah yeah, they've got a love that ain't got no name.

So three songs into 'Head Music', Suede's fourth album, and the emperor is revealed once more as naked: Brett Anderson, 31, has nothing new to say. And as the album unveils its beautifully produced, smooth contours it's clear we're in for another instalment of Carry On Up The Chemicals. It's sex, it's drugs, it's suburban ennui, it's frequently hilarious, but that probably isn't the intention.

Brett may well be smacking the horse, shagging the pony, heating his meat to the gasoline beat, but, man alive, four albums in the plot is wearing thin. And if it's boring for us after seven years, what must it be like for him?

Which is why calling it 'Head Music' is a hoax. This isn't music for the mind, not unless you enjoy rereading the same book over and over, it's for the waist (calling it hip music might be pushing it). At its vibrant, snakey best, as on the single, 'Electricity', or the Codling-penned, Glitter-Band-cover-The-Fall stomp of 'Elephant Man', or 'She's In Fashion' (Rula Lenska breezes past, on roller blades, followed by a waft of Givenchy), this is hair-raising pop. It's not always their own pop, but if the melodies are sometimes borrowed, the delivery is always Suede's. It wiggles its autograph from speaker to listener with a distinctive fluorescent flourish.

But while Suede may be writing some of the most exciting pop of their career, they're also striking out for new pastures. Such as reggae. Oh yes, and oh no. 'Savoir Faire' is the first song that Brett's skanked upon and perhaps he should leave it at that. We, however, can't. "She make love and she swallow a dove in her room, room, room", wails Brett like Sir John Gielgud after a hit of skunk and you wonder if he's some kind of prude. Who else thinks this sort of behaviour, taking drugs, having sex, is remarkable after a decade immersed in a leather-clad rock band?

There are other strange influences at work too on 'Head Music' and they always work better than the reggae. 'Can't Get Enough' - in which Brett declares he, "feels real, like a man, like a woman, like a woman, like a man"! Ace! - is a brilliantly pounding metallic singalong with a chorus tune not unfamiliar with 'I'm A Man' by the Spencer Davis Group. Strange, but actually good. Less good is the overwrought balladry of 'He's Gone' which, if you're feeling charitable, sounds a bit like 'Avalon' by Roxy Music but actually borrows from - ugh - Chris De Burgh's 'The Lady In Red'.

Beyond these details (did we mention how 'Everything Flows' is akin to Duran Duran's 'Save A Prayer'?) it's clear that Suede have tried to move their sound on, using keyboards and other wired musical devices, and they've pulled it off without sounding forced or arch. It's futuristic and alien, like a rock'n'roll Tubeway Army, and it suits them.

And if Brett's looking for ways to break out of the lyrical pen he's boxed himself into, then the clue is already here, on 'Indian Strings'. At last, as Brett moans through a sweeping veil of strings, "You will see my heart has broken too/Because I've seen the real you", we learn something autobiographical. In fact the song could be for us because at last we've finally caught a glimpse of the real him too.