Wild At Heart

How the 'best new band in Britain' earned their title...

- Kevin Harley

On those occasions when Suede needed a reboot, they would often look to their debut for guidance. Thirty years on from its release, you can see why. Across the years, the album has often been discussed in terms of its proto-Britpop ‘moment’. But it holds up superbly freed from that context as a deeply distinct and thrillingly flash statement of what Suede do, creating its own world while doing practically everything it can to grab the attention.

With punk energy, glam theatricality, rock swagger, Smiths-ian virtuosity, pop melodies and hints of British art-rock to hand, the album thrives in the push-pull between the melancholia of humdrum certainty and a sense of yearning for more, for transformation. It exists in a state of sweaty, feverish and sexualised longing between the sticks and the stars, with fulfilment tantalisingly close to hand: as bassist Mat Osman notes below, Suede’s gathering momentum at the time energises the album. And its tensions are conveyed bracingly upfront, where Brett Anderson’s lunging vocals and lavish lyrics tussle with Bernard Butler’s serpentine guitar work and voracious magpie sensibilities.

Butler drew from a wider pool than received positions on Suede might suggest. The Drowners churns in Children Of The Revolution’s wake, clearly, but the meltingly gorgeous Breakdown was made with the rather more unlikely Rod Stewart (The First Cut Is The Deepest) playing nearby. For Metal Mickey, the influence was The Shoop Shoop Song. And never mind