POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Suede Lives Up to Its Praises

Acclaimed almost universally by the English rock press as the band of 1992, Suede arrived for its Los Angeles debut at the new Hollywood Colonnade club trailing a seemingly impossible-to-live-up-to string of praises and comparisons to vintage Bowie and prime Smiths.

Remarkably, by the end of the night in the comfortably intimate setting (the former site of Hollywood Live), the quartet had darn near lived up to it, convincing not only the eager-to-be-pleased, starved-for-meaning kids who made up about half the roughly 500 on hand, but also the veteran cynics who were hoping to see another touted act fall on its fresh face.

Most remarkably, Suede accomplished this coup without a trace of calculated star attitude or shock value. Even the stage-backing banner of two young men kissing--which is also the cover of the band’s recent debut album--seemed tender rather than shocking, a visual representation of the unaffected disaffection of the group’s songs and the confident, but not cocky, manner of singer Brett Anderson, who could indeed rival Morrissey as an affection-inspiring frontman.

Anthemic ballads such as “Pantomime Horse” and roiling rockers like “Animal Nitrate”--both marked by Anderson’s earnest, reaching vocals and Bernard Butler’s ascending guitar lines--conveyed, like Bowie’s early-’70s best, a sense of being on the verge of something really big. And that’s just what Suede seems to be.

A coterie of record company talent scouts turned out looking for their own next big thing in the opening act, Pennsylvania trio Suddenly, Tammy. They may have found something close enough, a seemingly sure-fire college radio fave, its piano-bass-drums lineup refreshingly free of any trendy posturing.