Suede - Dog Man Star [20th Anniversary Edition]

Pumped full of spiky swagger, including copious allusions to illicit suburban thrills and framed in a defiantly home-grown vernacular, Suede’s was a very British pairing of grimy parochial realities with evocative escapism, completely at odds with the bleak blueprint established by Cobain, Vedder et al across the pond. With an early run of dazzling hits that included "Metal Mickey", "Animal Nitrate" and "So Young", the Londoners’ standing as key players in the nascent Britpop movement was immediately guaranteed, and further cemented when they won the 1993 Mercury Music Prize for their eponymous debut LP.

Yet for all their flamboyance, Suede lacked the self-aggrandizing populism of many of their brasher peers, and casual observers were still likely to place the quartet on Britpop’s second tier. Cue their gloriously OTT magnum opus, originally released in October 1994, six months after Parklife and a few weeks following Definitely Maybe.

As befits a lavish box set package containing, among other items, a hardback volume of Anderson’s handwritten lyrics, the entire album on cassette and an “exclusive Suede plastic carrier bag”, Dog Man Star veers hazardously close to self-parody. There’s that ostentatious welcome in "Introducing The Band", the heroic nonsense of "The 2 Of Us", some Anderson-by-rote references in "Daddy’s Speeding" to “dreams of gasoline”- but it’s hard not to admire the gung-ho single-mindedness of it all. Because when Dog Man Star is good, it’s astounding.

Along with Blur’s "For Tomorrow", stand-out and band fave "The Wild Ones" really is one of Britpop’s true crowning glories, entreating romantic flight from small-town torpor (“we'll ride from disguised suburban graves…”) as a string section swells to a blockbuster crescendo. A climactic double-header of the ten minute-long reverie "The Asphalt World" and melodramatic curtain-call "Still Life" evince a band way beyond caring about looking just a bit show-offy.

Dog Man Star was re-issued as recently as 2011, so fans will already be familiar with just how fertile 93/94 was for the group. The second 14-track bonus disc here confirms the strength of material which first saw the light of day backing up better-known hits. Although it would probably be fair to describe the ambient quarter-of-an-hour long drawl of "Eno’s Introducing The Band" or "La Puissance" (Anderson’s French language version of "The Power") as strictly For Completists Only, the best of their b-sides rank amongst Suede’s finest moments. "The Living Dead" alludes to the hard drug use that would plague the band, whilst chronicling a litany of trampled dreams and broken promises. Exhibiting a David Bowie influence more brazen than almost anywhere else in their canon, it succeeds in justifying such a lofty reference point. The taut, razor wire glam of "Killing Of A Flashboy" which first turned up on the flipside to "We Are The Pigs", is as menacing and quintessentially British as Richard Attenborough’s sharply-attired young hooligan Pinky in Brighton Rock.

Retailing in the UK for a little under £100, this bumper edition is for true Suede fanatics only. But what a mad, marvellous triumph Dog Man Star is.