Album: The Tears

Here Come The Tears, INDEPENDIENTE

There was a faint whiff of the inevitable about the reunion of Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, both men's careers having flattened out somewhat since the latter left Suede a decade earlier. That air of inevitability extends also to Here Come The Tears, the debut album by their new band, which reprises much the same tropes that drove Anderson's lyrics in Suede, and presents them in a slightly more expansive variant of that band's trademark sound. As before, the songs are largely concerned with loners, misfits and mis-shapes. In some cases, the characters fantasise of escape, but others remain trapped. And of course, there's the love song that could be a drug song ("Beautiful Pain"), typical of the band's musical approach in the way the strings sway wanly around Anderson's florid vocal and Butler's keening guitars. Most interesting of all are a couple of songs that have an autobiographical edge to them: "Fallen Idol", in which a has-been mopes at home, feeling "empty as the middle class"; and "Co-Sta

There was a faint whiff of the inevitable about the reunion of Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, both men's careers having flattened out somewhat since the latter left Suede a decade earlier. That air of inevitability extends also to Here Come The Tears, the debut album by their new band, which reprises much the same tropes that drove Anderson's lyrics in Suede, and presents them in a slightly more expansive variant of that band's trademark sound. As before, the songs are largely concerned with loners, misfits and mis-shapes. In some cases, the characters fantasise of escape, but others remain trapped. And of course, there's the love song that could be a drug song ("Beautiful Pain"), typical of the band's musical approach in the way the strings sway wanly around Anderson's florid vocal and Butler's keening guitars. Most interesting of all are a couple of songs that have an autobiographical edge to them: "Fallen Idol", in which a has-been mopes at home, feeling "empty as the middle class"; and "Co-Star", the lament of a marooned half of a double-act waiting for their partner to return, for "when we're together, my co-star and me". As realised in Here Come The Tears, it's less a great step forward than a regrouping of old forces; but none the worse for that.