Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 06/06/05
Label: Independiente

It was a scenario equal to anything in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", albeit in colour and with a superior soundtrack. When guitarist Bernard Butler quit Suede on the eve of the release of their second album, "Dog Man Star", the damage done to the band was considerable, to the fast souring relationship between him and singer Brett Anderson - irreparable. Or so it seemed.

Having spent the intervening decade following their own career paths -Anderson with a fair degree of success (he dissembled Suede in 2003), Butler markedly less so - and stewing in the mutual bitterness of their ill feeling for one another, the Brett and Bernard show is now up and running once more. The singer has claimed that, when Suede folded - due largely to his increasingly enthusiastic use of virtually every drug under the sun - he wanted to "get [his] demon back". So, has he managed it for The Tears' debut? Sort of, is the only possible answer.

It's a disappointment to discover that the pair still lean so heavily on "The Man Who Sold The World"- and "Hunky Dory"-era Bowie and Anderson is still penning lyrics about cigarettes, coffee, mascara and magazines, like he's just beamed in from the Bronze Age (although he's now added texting ["in Japanese"] to his self-conscious lexicon of modernity), but the sexy, lurching, late-night potency that made Suede singles like "The Drowners", "Metal Mickey" and "Animal Nitrate" such gold-plated killers is still in evidence.

True, the hubristic roar has been softened a little by age and experience (Anderson is now 37, after all) and The Tears' soaring, sighing tuneage will appeal to the Coldplay/Keane generation in a way that peak-period Suede never would have - but you can still hear it. Thus, "Two Creatures" laments the state of our world in much the same way as The Beautiful South might have and "Lovers" (a low point) summons the frightening spectre of Dodgy, but "The Ghost of You" - about the death of Anderson's mother - shows a real vulnerability and "Brave New Century" (see?) is an atypical triumph, a stonking, bluesy grind that suggests Butler's been pulling out his old Led Zeppelin records. He should do so more often.

With "Here Come The Tears", Anderson and Butler have basically remodelled themselves for a more sensible and sober Suede fan base and whether the couple have a future beyond their debut, who knows. Disappointingly, there's little here to startle the natives.

    by Sharon O'Connell