Suede: Dog Man Star (2LP, 30th anniversary edition, 180g, half-speed master) [DEMON]

Why you'll love it

Phil Kinrade half-speed mastered this 30th anniversary 2LP set at AIR, and it comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold with an obi strip and booklet. The album reached No. 3 in the UK, and NME ranked it among the 500 greatest albums of all time.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 30th anniversary edition
• Half-speed master
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Obi strip
• Booklet included
• Remastered

About the album

Britpop was busy getting cheerful in 1994. Suede went the other way, toward grand, cinematic heartbreak, and made the album many fans now hold up as their masterpiece. Where the debut wore its Bowie and Smiths influences openly, Dog Man Star reaches wider, into torch songs, orchestral sweep and glam drama.

Producer Ed Buller recorded it at Master Rock in London in early 1994, and it was the last Suede album with guitarist Bernard Butler, whose playing is all over it. "Introducing the Band" sets a strange, incantatory scene, "We Are the Pigs" crashes in with horns and menace, "The Wild Ones" is one of Brett Anderson's most gorgeous ballads, and "New Generation" is pure, rushing glam. "The Asphalt World" stretches out into a long, smouldering epic, and "Still Life" closes the album under a full orchestra. Anderson's lyrics are full of film-star glamour and bedsit loneliness, often in the same line.

It steadily built a devoted following in the years Suede were apart, until it sat comfortably among the defining British records of the decade. That's the slow-cooker method of becoming a classic, and frankly the results speak for themselves.

Also at Kops: more Suede on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Nude / Demon (cat# DEMREC1265), a reissue of the 1994 album.