I'M TOLD, by friends who were with me at the time,that I saw Suede perform at 1993's GlastonburyFestival. I have no recollection of this, which onlymeans that I had an excellent time and not that Suedewere completely useless festival headliners. Now,Suede's 1997 concert in Singapore, that's crystal, asis the memory of lead vocalist Brett Anderson smacking his tush with a tambourine (well, perhaps thetambourine is wishful, but he certainly did wiggle his small and perfectly formed rear end).

    Those who know my husband and I well are aware ofour shared desire to have Anderson's love child. This is due partly to our intense admiration of Suede's music, but, speaking for myself, I have to confess toa fascination for Anderson's latter day vampire goodlooks. Anne Rice would approve totally.I became a Suede fan when I first heard the band'ssecond album, Dog Man Star. Some Suede detractors call it a Bernard Butler album, and the following one,Coming Up, a "wishin'-he-was-here" copy. Perhaps so, but who gives a schlock who wrote what when it's written as perfectly as many of Suede's songs.

    Anyway, I have Bernard Butler's solo release and it's good, but it just doesn't have the same intense,mesmeric something that Dog Man Star simply dripswith. Tracks like Introducing The Band, The Wild Ones,Heroine and Still Life leave me feeling exhilarated and doomed at the same time. They are grand yethopeless gestures, full of decadent beauty and poeticirony. And Anderson's dark and tragic vocalsthundering above sweeping strings in Still Life isabsolutely breath taking, a stroke of sheer genius.Coming Up, while retaining Dog Man Star's sense ofscornful pessimism and bemused contempt, was,melodically, a much brighter record. Songs like TheBeautiful Ones and Lazy gave Suede more sass and pizzazz than they had ever possessed.

    These were songs you could sing-along to without having to fiddle withyour Zippos; the tunes inspired happy shuffling andhip-swinging; the lyrics ... the lyrics were stillabout aimless, apathetic people with chemical dreams and lives hanging by the seams. In fact, as a lyricist, Anderson seems to delightin writing about the same thing over and over again.It's true that poets and writers have pet subjects andtheories and themes that they like to re-visit, butthe approach and style is often altered. Not so withAnderson.

    It's like he's written one epic poem andthen chopped it up to make several songs. The same phrases pop up in all Suede's albums (the most obviousbeing "high on diesel" in both The Beautiful Ones andMy Insatiable One) and boy, does he have an intense liking for certain words - "pigs", "ones" - and settings; streets and rooms are favourites, oftenfeaturing that "she" person, who appears on Heroine and on Sadie (a B-side on Lazy) and as Sadie on The Sound Of The Streets (a Beautiful Ones's B-side) etc.,etc. And surely, that's her again in Savoir Faire, offthe latest album, Head Music. All this does not bode well for Anderson's reputation as a lyricist.

    No matter how good your lyrics are, they start losingtheir charm after they've been re-arranged for thefifth or sixth time. In any case, "She live in ahouse, she stupid as a mouse" is surely quite anembarrassingly bad couplet by any standards. Brett,you naughty boy, it's high time you - to adapt aphrase - pulled up those knicckers of yours, if indeedyou wear any. Oh, by the way, Suede diehards might be interested to know that, in Malaysia, we have a slightly different version of Savoir Faire. In our copy of thealbum, that most versatile of expletives has beenremoved and replaced with "killing". If I'm right,Anderson has recorded two versions, the "f"-less onefor us and probably middle-America.Back to the task of writing Suede's lyrics, I would suggest leaving it all up to keyboardist Neil Codling the next time around, except he fares dismally on Elephant Man - talk about doggerel.

    I wrote better when I was eight! Head Music is all about white lines and doves and girls, in the suburbs, on the radio, in cities, onstreets. Again. And again, the music is cold and aloof, hard and dark, sometimes groovy, frequently rather sexy in an impersonal, paid-for kinda way. And Anderson still sounds vaguely Bowie-ish (which Iadore), a little arrogant, a little stern,occasionally abashed. When Suede released their B-side (Sci-Fi Lullabies)as a filler album, it looked like they might be buyinga little time either because their next release wasgoing to be mind-blowingly revelational or becausethey weren't feeling too inspired to write. Looks likeit was the latter situation.

    Still, Suede fans mustget Head Music, if only to secure yet another piece inthe Anderson lyric jigsaw. And for those who aren't familiar with the band'swork, it's so entirely Suede that they couldn't failbut be charmed if they are the sort to enjoy Suede inthe first place. The thing about this album is that,although it's more of the same, as it's Suede, it'sstill totally different from anything else out there.And although it's not the pick of the band's work, it's still a darn sight better than a lot of otherpeople's best efforts.