Suede:
Coming Up
(1996)

Genre: Britpop with a touch of Glam.
Produced By: Ed Buller
Record Label: Nude

It took me a couple of listenings to find the nerve in the first single "Trash". But then I was totally sold and this was more or less the case for the entire album. "Coming Up" is filled with catchy glam-pop tunes and much more commercial and extrovert than the first two albums by Suede. To me, this is both a great strength and to a certain extent a weakness. The strength is that it provides Suede with several top hits and makes them extremely popular. The danger in this, though, is that the album may not have what it takes to be as popular in a couple of years the way "Dog Man Star" is. However, so far the weaknesses of the album have not surfaced to me and I still view it as a tour de force in pop craft. Songs like "Trash", "Beautiful Ones" and "Saturday Night" are born classics (at least when they are given time to breathe and not overexposed on the radio). In addition to the original album, this edition of the album contains an extra live CD with 6 tracks taken from both the album and earlier stuff. This, of course, enhances the quality of the package, but the album in itself does not need the bonus CD to stand out as a remarkable effort to me.

Overall Rating (on a scale from 1 to 10):9

Echobelly, Geneva, Pulp, Radiohead, Strangelove, The Verve.