|
''Dog Man Star'' is the second album by English alternative rock band Suede, released in October 1994 on Nude Records. The album was recorded in London at Master Rock studios in early 1994 and was produced by Ed Buller. It was the last Suede album to feature guitarist Bernard Butler, due to growing tensions between him and singer Brett Anderson ending with Butler leaving the band before the album was completed. ''Dog Man Star'' is darker than debut album ''Suede'' and chronicles the band as they eschewed from the "Britpop pack". In contrast to that album which highly emulated the influences of David Bowie and the Smiths,〔 ''Dog Man Star'' exhibits an individualistic aesthetic, drawing from a wider range of influences. Although it did not sell on the same scale as their chart-topping debut, ''Dog Man Star'' reached number three on the UK Albums Chart and was certified as gold by the BPI in November 1994.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=24 March 2014 )〕 The grandiose, ambitious, and heavily orchestrated album was greeted with enthusiastic reviews but muted commercial response,〔 however it is now considered by many to be Suede's masterpiece.〔.〕〔〔 On release it was relatively unknown in the mainstream, although the album has over time garnered universal acclaim from critics. This recognition was helped by Suede's 2010 reunion, which further solidified the album as one of the greatest of all time. In October 2013, ''NME'' magazine placed the album at number 31 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. ==Background== In early 1994, when Suede were about to release the standalone single "Stay Together", the morale within the group was at an all time low. Butler's father had died just as the band were about to begin their second American tour. The first week of the tour was cancelled, and Suede flew back to London from New York. When the tour did resume, Butler distanced himself from the rest of the band far more than before. Recently bereaved and engaged, according to Butler, "they got really resentful of the fact that they were on tour with someone who didn't want to party".〔Harris, p. 169〕 He even travelled separately, either alone, by taxi, or on the tour bus of support act the Cranberries. Then in Atlanta, Suede suffered the ignominy of having to open for the Cranberries,〔 who had been given a friendlier reception than the head-liners and received the support from MTV as well. By New York they had had enough and the last few dates were cancelled. According to drummer Simon Gilbert, Butler was becoming unworkable and intolerable, and the band could not function together any longer.〔Barnett, p. 131〕 To record Suede's next album Anderson moved to Highgate, and began to write lyrics influenced by heavy drugs while living in a secluded Victorian mansion. The album was later described by one journalist as "the most pompous, overblown British rock record of the decade." Anderson has said that its overblown sound was down to his use of psychedelic drugs. "I was doing an awful lot of acid at the time, and I think it was this that gave us the confidence to push boundaries."〔 Anderson has said that he thrived on the surreal environment he lived in at the time; next door were a sect known as the Mennonites, who would often sing hymns during Anderson's drug binges.〔 After the success of their debut album, Suede were hailed as the unwitting inventors of Britpop, something they were proud of for a short while. However, Britpop soon grew to be dominated by other musical forces, as Blur, Oasis and Pulp arrived on the scene. This disgusted Anderson, who called Britpop "horribly twisted, a musical ''Carry On'' film", and he began to distance himself from the scene.〔 "We could not have been more uninterested in that whole boozy, cartoon-like, fake working-class thing." the singer said in 2008, "As soon as we became aware of it, we went away and wrote ''Dog Man Star''. You could not find a less Britpop record. It's tortured, epic, extremely sexual and personal. None of those things apply to Britpop". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dog Man Star」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|