Suede - Bloodsports

Ah. The return of Suede, and nothing has changed at all.

Comforting to an extent.

While like many I advocate that artists should push at the boundaries there are some that I am quite open to listening to who are happy to maintain a position that they are comfortable with.

Suede are one of those bands.

If they had returned with an electro dub space opera I may have enjoyed it, but at the same time a small voice would whisper 'where's the animal nitrate' and I would have listened to it.

So Vive le Suede.

Here they are simply doing what they do and doing it damn well.

The break has certainly provided us all with enough time to miss them, and that absence has definitely made my heart grow fonder.

I don't think it has crossed my mind how much I had missed them until now.

I suppose I should expand on saying that nothing has changed.

I actually mean that literally.

They haven't lost anything at all.

The fire is still there.

The passion is to the fore and while they have delivered what we can call a Suede album it's not one that just tiredly ticks at boxes.

There's a good chance that when they sat down and decided to return that they communally decided that it wasn't worth doing unless it was done correctly.

Writing songs that echoed the past, but were a facsimile of that time were never going to cut it.

They needed to pick up from where they left off and maintain the thread, but at the same time ensure that every single note was delivered with the intent to ensure that this was not a cash in.

A throw away exercise of creating a product that they could tour with, but only to hang the back catalogue off of.

If that was the case then they should all be currently giving each other a pat on the back because they didn't just manage to hit a self imposed benchmark, but instead delivered something far more magical than they may have considered themselves was possible.

If you hated them before then you are still going to hate them.

Maybe even more.

If however you felt that their demise left a hole then here's the album that will fill every single nook and cranny of it.