Suede - Head Music (Nude) When news broke that Suede had employed Steve Osborne to produce Head Music, a few eyebrows were raised. Osborne, remember, is partly responsible for endowing a dance-friendly hip factor to erstwhile bland guitar bands, from Deacon Blue to the Happy Mondays and U2. Would Osborne transform Suede, the definitive glam-aping British guitar-pop troupe, into something groovier? The answer is half yes. This record is undeniably Suede at their most flirtatious with modern technology: their trademark show-stopping guitar riffs sit with beeps and loops.
The ambivalence lies in the band's refusal to carry the new tendencies through. The cracks are most evident when their tributes to their glam ancestors deviate towards the farcical: Elephant Man sounds eerily like a Slade pastiche.
Lyrically, Head Music opens up no new ground either, offering repetition of the same old themes: a celebration of apocalyptic hedonism of sexed-up, drugged-up misfits in 'nowhere towns' and 'violent homes'.
The saving grace of the album lies in the more introspective moments: the swelling grandiose of ballads like Everything Will Flow, Down or He's Gone. If Suede is to recapture the throne they held with their earlier stuff, however, real music for the head is called for.
