High On Diesel And Gasoline

Before the inevitable cocktail of smack, crack and old age kicked in, Brett Anderson was a lyrical genius. Now before you all choke on your Pitchfork Media bookmarks, just hear me out.
Whilst the less self-conscious amongst the music intelligentsia will be willing to admit that the band's self-titled debut and its follow up, Dog Man Star are great albums, the general consensus is that Suede's quality left with Bernard Butler. This, however, is entirely false, for the band's third album, Coming Up is quite the masterpiece. Far from being some bullshit Britpop brush-aside, Coming Up is a knowing and clever pop gem. What people fail to realise about this album is that it is pastiche. It knowingly apes the cultivated public persona of cheap and sleazy glamour of their previous material, as well as the band's style and mannerisms. "Maybe, maybe it's the clothes we wear, the tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair...maybe, maybe it's our nowhere towns our nothing places and our cellophane sounds." That shit is witty. Bands who shift units like Suede did are not supposed to be that self-aware. But for me the killer line on the album comes in the 7 minutes epic The Chemistry Between Us where Anderson sings "Oh, class A, class B, is that the only chemistry between us?". To me, that line is a good summation of the band, it's a line loaded with wonderful imagery. The thing is no-one credits Anderson with being able to be that wry. In light of some of the abysmal lines that he was to write on subsequent releases maybe it's best to be cynical, but I like to think that he had a knowing smirk on his face when he wrote that lyric.
Beside being such a literary masterwork, Coming Up also contains some of the best glam-pop hooks Bowie never wrote. Where previous Suede albums were much suited to being consumed smacked out on one's bed in a dingy council flat, Coming Up is a motherfucking party starter. The Beautiful Ones is mandatory for any UK-centric club night and Filmstar should be on every single one of those bullshit "driving songs" compilations they sell at motorway service areas. Unfortunately, due to the band's lack of coolness amongst the tastemakers Coming Up is destined to be one of the great overlooked albums of the nineties (that said, Dog Man Star is better).