Brett Anderson

[Johan de Witt]

He releases his first solo album early next year.
Better late than never.
Looking forward to it.

From his website:
so the album is mixed ( by the lovely Steve Fitzmaurice),mastered( by the superlative Bunt Stafford Clarke) and ready to penetrate your eardrums. i've lived with the songs for so long and i still love them...i suppose that means something. the record will be released early next year on Drowned in Sound records in the UK and a major who i have worked with before ( sorry can't be specific cos we are still dealing lawyers) in the rest of the world.

as i said last time i popped on here, me, Peter saville and Wolfgang Tillmans have been squirreling away at the artwork . we have tried to create something human and vulnerable , delicate and damaged that resonates with the openness and simplicity of the music. the idea is for the sleeve to usher you into my little world . the Tillmans shots were taken in my studio at home with a million reference points dotted around me like little stars. i suppose there's a parralel with that Style Council sleeve- My Favorite Shop (get googling anyone not brought up in the 80's)..

rehearsals haver been going nicely. the band might evolve and change but at the moment we have Fred on keys, Jim Dare on guitar, Bastion on bass( although i have been recently rehearsing with someone you all know well) and Kriss Sonne on drums( incidentally...one of the best drummers i have ever met) .So there you go...cats out of bags and all that. hopefully it won't be too long before you can come along and shout for The Drowners. there will be a couple of bona fide surprises live so watch out and stay focussed.

[dazzak]

I think he's really at a crossroads with this album. He can:

A) Give the "fans" what they want by recreating the sound and aesthetics of Suede's commercial peak

or

B) Accept that the world has moved on, he is older, commercial success is probably well out of his grasp by now and that what's important is his development as a songwriter.

Option A would lead to the less than edifying sight of a man pushing 40, whipping his buttocks with a microphone lead, sans dignity, becoming a parody of his younger self and a nostalgia act rather than a going concern. Precedents: The Stones, 80's tours with Tony Hadley and Kim Wilde.

Option B would mean either sinking without a trace or becoming an elder statesman for a new generation who clearly already love his 90's work. This option also would mean that Brett would rightly be regarded as a great songwriter and a creative force who used to slap his botty. This option also allows Brett to continue making records indefinitely. Precedents: Bowie, Lou, Weller, Moz.

We already know he's leaning towards B, but can he actually do it? Well, if we get more of the direct and personal writing of "Ghost of you", "Asylum", and, before the Tears, "Simon" and "Oceans", then yes, I think he can. Brett has the potential to make a Heathen or a Wild Wood, and that's what he has to do. There's nothing more embarrassing than a middle-aged singer pretending to be 25, but the artists I've mentioned have shown that you can age with dignity by writing about adult themes while still appealing to teenagers.

I said to my friends ages ago that Reed's Berlin really needs to be Brett's touchstone. It has that musical minimalism, and it's also full of the sort of freaks, weirdos, drug addicts, hookers and general lowlifes that have always populated Brett's songs. However, it's darker, has more depth and is more mature than Suede's stuff. What we don't want is "Beautiful Ones II", but "Where Are The Beautiful Ones Now?". An album about burn-outs, sell-outs and senile old eccentics, an older and wiser Brett musing on the fallout of all those nights clubbing with the shaveheads and raveheads, the unwanted pregnancies, the rehab, the lives wasted by getting wasted once too often... that would be a fucking brilliant record.

I truly believe that, if everything goes right for Brett, he could achieve that elder statesman role. Every few years, some old fart gets rehabilitated and everyone loves them again: Elvis Costello, Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Bryan Ferry, Morrissey. Brett has as much talent as any of those. Also, his lyrics and musicianship are actually getting better, which can't be said of some.

I also found it really encouraging that he namechecked The Style Council (one of the greatest British bands ever). I mean, the actual sleeves were mostly shite, but I think Brett was talking more about that sublime detail and Paolo Hewitt's Cappuccino Kid notes. Good sign.

[beau]

He never was particularly the strongest pf lyricists. Seemed like every song mentioned the skyline or diesel fumes. I've seen them 5 times starting in 1993.

I bought The Tears and frankly it bored me to tears.

[dazzak]

He never was particularly the strongest pf lyricists. Seemed like every song mentioned the skyline or diesel fumes. I've seen them 5 times starting in 1993.

I bought The Tears and frankly it bored me to tears.

I agree that Brett can be as shit and cliched as he can be brilliant (and more often pre-Tears, he was the former), but I think he gets a raw deal a lot of the time. And The Tears were anything but boring, aside from a few lousy tracks.

[Johan de Witt]

I think he's really at a crossroads with this album. He can:

A) Give the "fans" what they want by recreating the sound and aesthetics of Suede's commercial peak

or

B) Accept that the world has moved on, he is older, commercial success is probably well out of his grasp by now and that what's important is his development as a songwriter.

Option A would lead to the less than edifying sight of a man pushing 40, whipping his buttocks with a microphone lead, sans dignity, becoming a parody of his younger self and a nostalgia act rather than a going concern. Precedents: The Stones, 80's tours with Tony Hadley and Kim Wilde.

Option B would mean either sinking without a trace or becoming an elder statesman for a new generation who clearly already love his 90's work. This option also would mean that Brett would rightly be regarded as a great songwriter and a creative force who used to slap his botty. This option also allows Brett to continue making records indefinitely. Precedents: Bowie, Lou, Weller, Moz.

We already know he's leaning towards B, but can he actually do it? Well, if we get more of the direct and personal writing of "Ghost of you", "Asylum", and, before the Tears, "Simon" and "Oceans", then yes, I think he can. Brett has the potential to make a Heathen or a Wild Wood, and that's what he has to do. There's nothing more embarrassing than a middle-aged singer pretending to be 25, but the artists I've mentioned have shown that you can age with dignity by writing about adult themes while still appealing to teenagers.

I said to my friends ages ago that Reed's Berlin really needs to be Brett's touchstone. It has that musical minimalism, and it's also full of the sort of freaks, weirdos, drug addicts, hookers and general lowlifes that have always populated Brett's songs. However, it's darker, has more depth and is more mature than Suede's stuff. What we don't want is "Beautiful Ones II", but "Where Are The Beautiful Ones Now?". An album about burn-outs, sell-outs and senile old eccentics, an older and wiser Brett musing on the fallout of all those nights clubbing with the shaveheads and raveheads, the unwanted pregnancies, the rehab, the lives wasted by getting wasted once too often... that would be a fucking brilliant record.

I truly believe that, if everything goes right for Brett, he could achieve that elder statesman role. Every few years, some old fart gets rehabilitated and everyone loves them again: Elvis Costello, Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Bryan Ferry, Morrissey. Brett has as much talent as any of those. Also, his lyrics and musicianship are actually getting better, which can't be said of some.

I also found it really encouraging that he namechecked The Style Council (one of the greatest British bands ever). I mean, the actual sleeves were mostly shite, but I think Brett was talking more about that sublime detail and Paolo Hewitt's Cappuccino Kid notes. Good sign.

I agree that option B is really the only serious option Anderson has.
The Tears already tried option A and failed.
However, it will be hard for Anderson to quite match the careers of Moz/Ferry/Lou Reed/Weller if only because Suede were hardly as influential as any of the bands those front man originated from.
Also I agree with Beau that Anderson isn't the world greatest lyricist. However, neither are Ian Brown or Richard Ashcroft and they are still pretty successful. Wrong example.

I think he will look with more than a little interest to see how Jarvis Cockers first solo-album is going to be received. A man in much the same position as Anderson. Honestly I think both will just have to make a really strong album and not worry about sales figures all that much. They have a high enough profile to at least gather sufficient interest to carry on a lot longer so they have to be in it for the long haul and not try to go for instant success, hard as it is these days...

[dazzak]

I agree that option B is really the only serious option Anderson has.
The Tears already tried option A and failed.
However, it will be hard for Anderson to quite match the careers of Moz/Ferry/Lou Reed/Weller if only because Suede were hardly as influential as any of the bands those front man originated from.
Also I agree with Beau that Anderson isn't the world greatest lyricist. However, neither are Ian Brown or Richard Ashcroft and they are still pretty successful. Wrong example.

I think he will look with more than a little interest to see how Jarvis Cockers first solo-album is going to be received. A man in much the same position as Anderson. Honestly I think both will just have to make a really strong album and not worry about sales figures all that much. They have a high enough profile to at least gather sufficient interest to carry on a lot longer so they have to be in it for the long haul and not try to go for instant success, hard as it is these days...

That is so not what Brett and Bernard did, though. I was around at the very beginning of The Tears, on the website and reading everything they had to say and they never set out to make (and didn't make) a revisionist, derivative piece of work. People have that misconception because they wrote some great pop songs as if that was somehow culturally unique to Suede. I mean, when they got together again, you weren't going to be listening to electro-sleaze or a folky, Bert Jansch inspired album because that's not what those two are like when they work together.

Also, I think he very well could produce an album as good as anything by Ferry, Reed, Bowie, Moz or Weller. Anyway, it's not about how big impact the artists had on a relative music scale, it's about music's reduced meaning in our society. When The Jam hit five straight number ones, they fucking ruled England. When Oasis had a few number ones, they ruled the music tabloids. Today, no one cares about who's number one or music's real cultural significance. The celebrity circus means so much more today, Paris Hilton and reality soap stars are bigger than most musicians. Fame is short-term, fame is burning out fast and thus fame must be easily digested, vulgar and consumable for anyone. Good music is the antidote to all that, though. Good music is important, but it doesn't hold any social importance whatsoever anymore, so it's an uphill and ultimately futile cause.

You only have to look at Preston from The Ordinary Band - a man who went from wanting to be Weller to wanting to be a Bo Selecta character in a few short months, all for success. It's tragic, but most people can tell you who Jodie Marsh is fucking, but have never heard "Re-Make/Re-Model". Russell Brand is more famous than Antony Hegarty. If anyone can find a possible justification for that one, you deserve a medal.

As another distincly unfamous genius, Mr Luke Haines, once wrote: "Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it." Wise words, but I've just turned the radio on and they're playing Dexys... Kevin Rowland, another genius, yet who is he? "That bloke who wrote that wedding reception song... "Too Ray-Ay" or something." I'm really fucking depressing myself here.

Getting back to my point, Weller is probably the most important comparison, not because of the music, but because their career path is/could be very similar. If you remember the start of Weller's solo career, the man had become a laughing stock. The final years of The Style Council saw him become a critical and commercial nonentity (the last SC record wasn't even released)*. And yet he came back with a warm AOR sound that reminded everyone who he was, then you got Wild Wood and Britpop happened... from sad, old twat to Grandad of Dadrock in a few short years.

I'm not sure Brett could be quite as successful (he's not quite as hooligan-friendly as Weller), but he can certainly achieve elder statesman status.

*Actually, The Council's last album for Polydor was just too early and ahead of its time. He picked up the garage and deep house scene as it was happening in the US and no one (apart from the small progressive mod-brigades) understood what was going on. Then, a few years later, all of Britain was E'd off their nuts and dancing to the same beats and pianos. Paul made a cover of Joe Smooth's "The Promised Land" (the #1 dancefloor garage anthem) and recorded tracks like "Sure Is Sure" up there with Britain's best dance music ever. It was the perfect end to The Style Council. Misunderstood, extremely trendy, rooted in soul culture and seeing dance music's political power, he was indeed five years ahead of his time.

[boyvoyeur]

i will look forward to hearing it, but he failed miserably with "the tears" and that was with the genius that is bernard butler, so i doubt he'll pull it out of the bag.... hope he does tho

[handsome devil]

I'm looking forward to the album and hoping that, for the sake of the fans, he didn't go for the A option.

[elmierasusanna]

what are u talking about the tears cd was best thing from Brett in a long time

[dcn]

I don't think the overall magic of their first partnership was there throughout the entire record but Apollo 13 is as good as anything Suede did. It was a very good record. Maybe not great but better then most.

[tender hooligan]

I dont know about you, but nobody said anything about that crystal-like voice.It is just pure beauty IMO

[Lanark]

Nothing much has happened yet on www.brettanderson.co.uk, so some of you may not have noticed:

"from monday there will be a regularly fortnightly solo performance by brett available on youtube. material will range from brand new songs to very old songs with a few surprises thrown in. the session starts off with an exlusive world premiere of 'scorpio rising'; a track from his forthcoming album."

That item in the site's news section is dated "30 OCT 06," this upcoming Monday. So I assume that's when the first video will go up, rather than the next Monday (I don't see why else a news item would have a future date). The name of the YouTube account that will upload the videos isn't given. I suppose that will change on Monday.

[Lanark]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbTJrpl0hfo

[dazzak]

Yeah, it's good, especially the guitar playing. Not brilliant (some of the lyrics are very Sci-Fi disc 2), but I'd say it'll be better on the album and, hopefully, there'll be better stuff on the album. Me reckons it's going to be one very dependent on atmosphere, too, so taking it out of the context of the album and its surrounding songs perhaps does it an injustice.

I really didn't think Brett could play guitar so well. Ravi Shankar's got nothing on him.

[poprenaissance]

I really didn't think Brett could play guitar so well. Ravi Shankar's got nothing on him.

brett really surprised me here too - really interesting chord changes and passing notes, all played really fluidly. yer ravi shankar comment is really hyperbolic, but there's no doubt he's got serious talent playing-wise. i'd really like to see more of that.

[Johan de Witt]

Okay, the album version of "Song For My Father" has been played on Swedish radio a lot, so a friend gave me a link. Made it into an MP3, here it is:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LBWNOF2C

Thanks for that.
Sounds really good.
Still no reason to expect anything better than A New Morning or Here Come The Tears though, as they had some really good songs too.

I guess the new single will tell us whether he is going the Suede-by-numbers road or the Berlin-road.

[Worm]

Anyway, it's not about how big impact the artists had on a relative music scale, it's about music's reduced meaning in our society. When The Jam hit five straight number ones, they fucking ruled England. When Oasis had a few number ones, they ruled the music tabloids. Today, no one cares about who's number one or music's real cultural significance. The celebrity circus means so much more today, Paris Hilton and reality soap stars are bigger than most musicians. Fame is short-term, fame is burning out fast and thus fame must be easily digested, vulgar and consumable for anyone. Good music is the antidote to all that, though. Good music is important, but it doesn't hold any social importance whatsoever anymore, so it's an uphill and ultimately futile cause.

An apt observation and well stated, dazzak. Now that we've gotten you talking about Brett Anderson, I see that hidden reserves of dazzakian insight which had been previously assumed are now being revealed. Might we expect your name to appear in a music press byline any time soon?

The only point where I would differ with or expand on your observation is that while music has become less socially significant, it is not entirely mass culture that's to blame. The artists themselves have not taken up the same responsibility their inspirations did. A band like The Jam hasn't reappeared partly because of the celebrity culture you disparage and also because, for whatever reason, few if any contemporary artists want to have, or are capable of having, any real social importance. Oasis merely ruled the tabloids because that's all they were equipped to do.

There are a number of reasons why, but in my opinion the most important reason is that new artists who get into popular music (a term I'm using in its broadest, most inclusive sense) cut their teeth by imitating what has gone before them. In almost every case you read about, a band starts up when a couple of songwriters get together and basically plunder their record collections, whether that means learning to play riffs on the guitar or electronic sampling. It's a given that you're stealing when you're starting out. The good bands find their own sound and stride.

The problem with "socially significant" music is that the ideas are the one part of the recipe that's the hardest to transmit from generation to generation. You can sit in a room and learn "The Eton Rifles" on your Gibson, you can do the Mod thing with your clothes, you can gather about you the artefacts of "yoof culture", you can even put all the right books on your shelf, but you can't absorb Weller's worldview as easily. Too often, I think, we've seen diminishing returns in "socially significant" genres of popular music because people are missing the essence of the old guard even as they successfully appropriate their attitudes and gestures. It's true in rap music as well.

Meanwhile, in the supposedly more vapid forms of popular music, like dance, hip-hop, and electronica, there are lots of exciting or at least innovative trends in the music. Artists are transparently stealing and copying in these "degraded" forms yet somehow they sound fresher than contemporary rock music precisely because they are not trying for social significance. Oasis never sounded so flaccid and pointless than when they talked about being one of "the great rock and roll bands". They made me think of the line in the Bunnymen's "Seven Seas", "What's the point in stealing/Without the grace to be it?"

So if people don't care about these bands in the same way anymore, again I think the celebrity culture is not entirely to blame. Most guitar-based music is passe at the moment. No matter how good Brett Anderson's new album may be, he's not going to roar over the national airwaves like the old lions. I don't think that's possible anymore. However deeply our appreciation may be for Brett Anderson as Suede/indie rock fans, for most listeners almost anything guitar-based has two strikes against it already. They're not looking to them for significance any more than a traveler would look to a horse and buggy for transportation in the years after Ford invented the model T. I don't completely blame them.

[Houdini]

The new single, Love is Dead

[mike joyce]

suede=shit

[skellngtn]

check this out for some new Brett tracks...

http://obscuresound.com/?p=776