Cons: 'Elephant Man', 'Savoir Faire', 'Elephant Man', 'She's in Fashion', did I mention 'Elephant Man'? Similar sleeve design to their last album, 'Coming Up'
Imagine, two kids on a subway train with the whole seat to themselves. They look kinda like Posh and Becks as teenagers except one look and it's clear they both possess above-room-temperature IQs, she's got the intelligence of a Rhodes scholar but the smarts to know that that's just a joke, he can plot the velocity needed to escape the earth's pull in a second but his mind's already in outer space. They kiss long and deep as, in a predictable phallic moment, the train emerges from the tunnel and across a long narrow bridge. They look out of the window and see The City, gleaming metal towers amid a sea of diamond blue. This is what they're journeying to, what they've sold their lives away for, the whole squalid mess of them all for this one night of bliss. For a moment their irony baffles fail and their eyes open wide in wonder at it's beauty. "Cool..." says the boy when he can trust himself to speak. "Yeah..." agrees the girl, then pulls a pistol from her tights. "Let's blow it all up!" The boy grins and necks a pill that won't be invented again for another seven years. And he begins the mantra that brings him sex and power... "We've got a love that's as cold as stone..." And this is what Suede Mark Two should sound like.
This was going to be so easy. I figured I could write a review slagging this album off before I'd even finished listening to it, because the singles, with the exception of the first one and album opener, 'Electricity' were so unbearably awful. I mean, anyone that can get up on stage and sing 'She lives in a house, she's stupid as a mouse' with a straight face has obviously left the path of glory and gone onto the path of 'Landlord, Charlie for me and my friends!' instead. 'Elephant man' is a ghastly folly, Suede-do-Oasis-do-Slade for God's sake and doesn't do little Dicky any favours if he's trying to prove that he's not just the Butler's replacement.
But the council for the defense will retalliate with 'Down', this album's equivelent of 'Picnic by the Motorway' or 'Europe is our Playground'.
Sonically 'Head Music' is trying to do 'Dog Man Star' with less guitars and more keyboards. It gets the mood right at times, but fails due to Brett's tendency, like most of his Brit-pop peers, to now write about what other people are doing rather than participating in it himself, Suede mark One was all about wearing your sisters clothes and swallowing those strange pills you found under her bed, Suede mark Two is wearing sensible shoes and nursing your drink in the corner, watching the bright young things, the Rich little Poor Girls, through bitter eyes. If you dislike Brett's love of repetition in songs, 'Head Music' will have you clawing out your ears in no time. The sleeve design meanwhile is basically 'Coming Up II- The Saga Continues', two people listening to music on headphones, psychedelically coloured. And possibly to try and deflect attention from the lyrics (more on which later) they have been scrawled as untidily as possible in order to make it impossible to read what Brett is singing.
Still, on with the show. With a sound like a trumpet farting Richard Oakes guitar launches us into 'Electricity', basically 'Trash' off 'Coming Up' with pylons instead of rubbish bins. There's nothing here seasoned fans won't have heard before, but it's done with such grace and verve that it's difficult to hate it. After such a bold start Suede obligingly shoot themselves in the foot (feet?) with 'Savoir Faire'. While the tune is decent this is basically every other b-side song that Brett's been writing since Bernard Butler left, 'Sadie', 'Duchess' etc. I've already mentioned the 'house/mouse' couplet, I'd forgotten 'She's got everything she needs, she's got pretty pretty feet.' For the love of Glod!
Simon Gilbert's drums launch us into 'Can't Get Enough', followed closely behind by a brace of 'woo-hoo's that were left over from recording 'She' on the last album. While the sound is unmistakably Noo Suede there are hints of the old school; 'I feel real like a man, like a woman, like a woman, like a man' and the chorus rocks satisfyingly, as if to prove to us that the band hasn't forgotten where it came from. Not quite. With 'Everything Will Flow' it's ballad time, it starts off with pleasant synthesised tones which sound vaguely Indian. Then we're in to territory more or less unvisited since b-side 'Europe is our Playground', as Brett laments life passing before his eyes, as he lays back, feeling apart and alienated from it. 'The lovers kissed with an openness... The cars parked in the hypermarket...' This is somehow the essence of this new brand of Suede, yet it slips past them as if they are not truly aware of it themselves.
The true centre of 'Head Music' is track 5, 'Down'. Both lyrically and musically simple, it is one of the few times when Brett's penchant for repeating an idea works to great effect. When he sings 'There's a sadness in your eyes and there's a blankness in your smile' it's like the good old times, when he captured hearts as he strutted on stage, singing the songs that told the truths of the girls, boy-girls, girl-boys and boys. And Richard makes the guitar sing as well in a beautiful instrumental. The song closes in the rock equivelent of the end of Holst's 'Planet Suite' (pretentious, moi?) as the chorus rises into infinity. The repitition of the first line after that is unnecessary. When I first heard Blur's 'The Great Escape' I felt they'd made an error by putting what should have been the last song on the album 'The Universal', in the middle of it. I feel similarly about 'Down', but we'll come to the final track later.
The mood is them promptly spoiled by the cold dog nose that is 'She's in Fashion', an adequate tune swamped by lyrics that sound like they were written in ten minutes involving more trite and nonsensical rhymes, how many cigarette-shaped women can you name? It basically sounds like a song that was recorded for 'Coming Up', wisely left off of that album then unwisely dug up, zombie-like, for this one. 'Asbestos' sounds like an old song as well, only good, though I doubt anyone knowingly listens or ever has listened to Amazulu. While Neil fiddles with a frequency generator in the background the rest of the band are again revisiting the terrain of their b-sides album, 'Sci-fi Lullabies' for a slow song about teenage sex, schoolgirls getting off with schoolboys. It sounds nice but leaves one a little cold, it doesn't really manage to engage.
Title track 'Head Music' starts out like a raid on the BBC Sound Effects Library but after this credibility-scything start they manage to stumble into a decent little tune, 'Give me head, give me head, give me head music instead', oh the cheeky little scamps, though the follow on line of 'it's all in the mind' does bring mood-spoiling rememberences of Madness' title song.
What defense Richard Oakes can offer for 'Elephant Man' I would like to hear, starting off like an angry bee, it then plods along like the titular animal, with Brett trying to sound threatening singing lines like 'we come rock and rolling into town', sounding like they come into town in a collection of tin cans. The smooth production values thus far desert them and they sound like they recorded the song in the broom cupboard. I suggest night-classes for Richard in 'How to ROCK!', this song is as deformed as the title would suggest.
Desperate to regain credibility next up is 'Hi-Fi'. When asked what direction their music was going post-'Coming Up' the Suede boys pointed to the cover they did of Noel Coward's 'Poor Little Rich Girl' (worth seeking out BTW) and it's most in evidence here, 'Slipping through the city' as though coated in Vaseline 'Hi-Fi' is cold, dispassionate and utterly brilliant. Although the lyrics are fairly standard for Brett when he makes the effort, the sound of the song is probably the furthest away from their standard sound. 'Indian Strings' is a return to more familiar territory, unremarkable and swathed in strings that sound suspiciously English String Quartet to me.
'He's Gone' has Brett doing his best Bowie impression during the verses. It's another slow song, the big finish, what should be a weepie about the aftermath of a breakup, where the emotion has drained away and a numbness remains, so the fact that he's gone 'feels like the words to a song'. Although it is a little moving, the numbness seems to infect the band and they seem suddenly unsure of what direction to take this, so they are forced to resort to fiddling about with the tone on Richard's guitar to take them to the fade out.
'Crack in the Union Jack' is Brett's bizarre decision to get political on us, with an acoustic guitar in best Unplugged style, yet it's such a feeble effort, more akin to a kid running in to a room, shouting something and running out again. It's so slight you wonder why he bothered. Chuck D has nothing to worry about I think. As for what it's about, I think it's Brett realising that things are not perfect in the country. As astonishing revelations go, it's hardly up there with Paul on the road to Damascus. Thanks for joining us Brett. If it had been swapped with 'Down', the album could have ended on a better note and not left a sour taste in the mouth.
So, what have we learned today children? On the whole, the best bits of 'Head Music' sound like what Suede have done before, the bad bits like stuff they'll hopefully never do again. A lack of inventiveness might be seen as a liability to other bands, with their back catalogue it's a boon to Suede. An uneven album at best, there seems to be a schizophrenia at work, forcing them from heart-stopping beauty to clod-hopping stupidity and back again. Hopefully they can seek treatment before they return to the studio for the next album, the girl with the gun in her head and the boy with the hungry heart deserve more than this.
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