Tom anderson guitars6/15/2023 “But it took quite a lot of work to sound this enthusiastic. “I’m very proud of this record,” the singer says. But looks can be deceiving, Anderson counters. The album feels like it simply exploded out of one single dusk-to-dawn session, like a vintage Richard Gottehrer “Instant” Ramones record. Underscored by the meaty, Will Sergeant-conversive axe work of guitarist Richard Oakes, who replaced departing founder Bernard Butler in 1994, songs like “Black Ice,” “Shadow Self,” “15 Again” and a sinister Gothic creeper ominously dubbed “It’s Always the Quiet Ones,” the disc is riveting, right through to the bass-heavy closing stomper, “Turn Off Your Brain and Yell.” From the opening anthem “She Still Leads Me On,” an uplifting, almost tear-jerking ode to his late mother, Anderson is yelp-bellowing with the same Grand Guignol bravura he displayed way back in 1993 on Suede’s dramatic Britpop-era debut, the Mercury Prize-winning Suede. But remarkably, the still-whip-thin vocalist is absolutely on rejuvenated fire on Autofiction, the group’s majestic new album, its eighth. After three decades in show business fronting British glam-punk combo Suede, or The London Suede, as they’ve been contractually re-christened in the States, Brett Anderson could easily have fallen prey to cynicism, meh-shrugging melancholia or complete loss of any novel sense of inspiration whatsoever.
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