Night Thoughts

Suede can still dwell on big issues of love and mortality, but now that the past is in perspective, it all means a little bit more and what lies ahead is a little more precious, and that wide view makes Night Thoughts all the more moving.

Night Thoughts is, according to the band, intended to be listened to as a single piece of work and in their recent live shows has been played in full. If this sounds a touch pretentious it is largely because there are plenty of individual songs strong enough and hooky enough to stand on their own.

As the rest of rock scurries to condense its charms into sync-friendly Shazamable nuggets, Britpop pioneers and eternal outsiders Suede slice gloriously against the grain once more with a grandiose semi-concept seventh album that demands to be consumed as a complete piece of art.

Night Thoughts is a record that deals poetically and bravely with the shadows that start to grow as we age and life's responsibilities weigh heavier on our shoulders. Brett Anderson seems as comfortable writing about the aging process as he did chemical smiles in the backs of Volvos and bored suburban housewives done in on sleeping pills etc, something that bodes well indeed for the future.

Despite ups and downs, Suede have remained an impressively robust-sounding live act, and that energy comes across in Night Thoughts.

Night Thoughts grabs hold immediately and only tightens its grip with each listen.

The dark nights of the soul only get darker with time, and Night Thoughts proves an unexpectedly congenial companion volume.

This time, Suede sound bolder, brave and better than they have in over 20 years.

There’s less of the superficial swagger, more mature contemplation and reflection.

This is Suede right near their very best. They remain incurable, helpless romantics, barely able to control their wildest musical thoughts, and Brett Anderson sounds like he depends on them more than ever.

Rooted in its own creation, Night Thoughts is expansive and enchanting.

The band have taken on an ambitious project, and have pulled it off with much aplomb.

Night Thoughts is another victory for the misfits.

Night Thoughts honors Suede’s longstanding place in Brit-rock history as theatrical brooders with a penchant for pop and post-punk, while also celebrating the five-piece’s growth by supplying listeners with another round of swirling dance ballads (the gloomy, arena-filling “Outsiders” and the twinkling “No Tomorrow”) and operatic, Dog Man Star-ry ruminations (“Tightrope”).

“How long will it take to break the plans that I never make?” It’s a question that was inevitably begged by those previous celebrations of low-rent outlaw glamour, and, in attempting to answer it, Suede may have made their best album.

Suede establish and uphold the album's gravitas with the type of symphonic grandiosity we've come to anticipate from them.

Where similarly grandiose songwriters like Chris Martin and Bono flail at balancing the huge and intimate, the personal and mass appeal, Anderson strikes the perfect balance on Night Thoughts.

Night Thoughts is the work of a band very much at home in the here and now, all the while looking forward. Still something else, still something wonderful. [Feb 2016, p.88]

Anderson has rarely sounded more desolate. And Suede, for two decades, have rarely sounded this compelling. [Feb 2016, p.106]

Night Thoughts is a fine entry in their already strong discography.

It’s a record about addiction, to be sure, but to an intoxicant more elusive, potent, and damaging than any street drug: desire. And like any stimulant, the highs are ecstatic (see: "Outsiders," a stained-sheet celebration of odd-couple consummation, or the nostalgically trashy "Like Kids") and the lows are crushing (see: pretty much everything else).

Night Thoughts is still a good album, but it lacks the vitality of its predecessor. Even if this works a bit more as a full statement, the songs on Bloodsports were better.

Night Thoughts is far from easy listening, but it's further proof that Suede's renaissance shows no sign of losing momentum.

Suede's realest, most human effort yet.

Self-serious and low on humour, Suede sometimes mistake bigness for greatness, but they still generate enough lusty passion to set pulses racing and hearts aflame. [Feb 2016, p.83]

Add production issues that have marred the bulk of their discography to the lack of tune and we have something that never lifts off: everything sounds mixed at the same level, resulting in mush.

It's "Pale Snow" and "Learning to Be" that take us furthest in this listening experience. These two dark, sparse ballads ground us; they're the Suede we know and love calling to us through the mists of this parallel twilight where they're setting up camp. One hopes further listens will reveal the rest of the songs somehow doing the same.