release date: May 3, 1999
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,38]
producer: Steve Osborne and Bruce Lampcov
label: Nude Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Electricity" - 4. "Everything Will Flow" (4 / 5) - 6. "She's in Fashion" (4 / 5) - 12. "He's Gone" - 13. "Crack in the Union Jack"
4th studio album by Suede. It has taken the band 2½ years to make the album but it still seems somewhat unfinished. Aside from introducing another new band member, Neil Codling on keyboards and synthesizers, it does contain great tracks like "Everything Will Flow" and "She's in Fashion" but it also contains an unprecedented number of album fillers, and the overall impression is an album on receipt - it's made more or less on the same blueprint as Coming Up just with an added synthpop touch (drum programming and synths) by Codling. The album producer Steve Osborne has previously produced for Curve, P.J. Harvey, New Order, and U2, and a similar touch doesn't do anything good for the sound of Suede.
Perhaps the band's new low point has to do with vocalist Brett Anderson's drug abuse - for whatever reasons, the album is a rather uneven experience and an immediate worst studio release from the hands of Suede, imho.
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5, NME 3,5 / 5 stars ]
