Brett Anderson leading Suede live in Manchester (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever Media)
There’s plenty to get your teeth into on New Music Friday with Suede, The Blinders and Christine And The Queens all releasing albums today. Check them out on Live4ever via Spotify right here.
Suede’s return with The Blue Hour has been described by the band as them getting back to being ‘unpleasant’, and is their third studio LP since the 2010 reunion.
By contrast, Columbia marks the start of The Blinders’ album career – one which, according to Live4ever, sees them joining ‘Cabbage, Shame and Idles as pioneers of a movement we’ve needed for some time, giving us faith in rock music again‘:
“Columbia doesn’t beat you over the head with its allegories. Brave New World might not be about Trump’s America, it could be about an ‘idiot king building a wall’ (although the Kardashians reference makes it hard to avoid), and Rat In A Cage doesn’t have to be about the migrant crisis, it could be a straight-forward call to arms, as Dream tells us to ‘come together, we need each other’. The politics is there if you want it to be, but it’s oblique enough to ignore should you choose to.”
For Héloïse Letissier, the new Christine And The Queens record Chris represents her being ‘totally and utterly exposed like there is nowhere to hide’, a bold statement of a record which combines these strong themes with a classical 80s pop sound.