Suede

Honestly, I struggled ranking Suede. The 90s indie/glam favourites have a very consistent discography and there are a lot of albums that are only separated by the smallest of margins; while their best album is clearly better than their worst, putting everything in order was a real headache, and after the regular listen-through with my wife (who knows the band much better than me) I had to go through the whole discography again on headphones to sort out how I felt about it.

This was one of my favourite of our discography journeys, though—I gained a new appreciation for Suede, who are undoubtedly one of the best of the 90s wave of British rock bands, and still going strong and making excellent albums. 

9. Head Music (1999)

Suede stretched out and experimented on their fourth album, ditching Ed Buller to work with dance producer Steve Osborne. It's their most experimental and "druggy" sounding album (Brett Anderson was notoriously addicted to crack at the time), and also their most stylistically diverse, running the gamut from electro numbers to stylish pop like the unbelievably catchy "She's in Fashion." They run out of tunes in the second half though. Not the first Suede album you should buy, but an interesting variation on their core sound once you have the more essential stuff.

8. A New Morning (2002)

This is the only Suede album I'd describe as being somewhat underrated. Suede were terminally out of fashion in the early 2000s, and this album does not have a the best of reputations. It's actually rather good, a collection of soulful, honest songs sympathetically produced by Stephen Street with Brett Anderson giving some of the most direct, emotional vocal performances of his career. Definitely worth a punt once you've heard some of their more celebrated albums.

7. Bloodsports (2013)

Suede's comeback album was heralded as a glorious return to form at the time. Ed Buller, who helmed their first three, returns as producer, and helps the band get back to their roots. The sound really pops, to the extent that I might call it their best produced album up to that point. The instrumental performances are great, too. Stylistically, it's mostly retreads of their early work that don't really add any new classics to their songbook, but it's an excellent reboot of the band that would lead to greater things.

6. Autofiction (2022)

Kind of a Mk2 version of Bloodsports, Autofiction scores over that album by being more energetic, with something of a "live in the studio" sound, having more memorable instrumental and vocal hooks, and with the fantastic two closing songs. The penultimate "What Am I Without You" is a gorgeous, soaring ballad, and "Turn Off Your Brain and Yell" is a storming finale. The whole album is an immensely satisfying listen without quite making it into the upper echelons of their discography.

5. Coming Up (1996)

The third and last of the "golden era" Suede albums is also the only one without guitarist Bernard Butler, who left the band acrimoniously and was replaced by the 17-year-old Richard Oakes by fanclub competition. He does a great job on this album, helping create the most immediate and accessible album of Suede's whole career. Anthems like Trash, The Beautiful Ones, and Filmstar are career highlights, as is the emotional seven minute epic The Chemistry Between Us.

4. The Blue Hour (2018)

The Blue Hour picks up the stunning late-career sound they established on Bloodsports and Night Thoughts and takes it to a new level of grandiosity, taking Suede's sound to previously unexplored places. Sweeping strings and choirs augment some incredible performances, particularly by Anderson and Oakes, culminating in the seven minute epic Flytipping. Suede, to coin a phrase, have aged like a fine wine, and the reformed band keeps on pumping out excellent albums.

3. Suede (1993)

If I were ranking these albums by their importance in the history of popular music, Suede's debut would comfortably come top. Generally regarded as the first britpop album (Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish, released a couple of months later, is also important), Suede brings together glam rock and 80s indie-pop with a dose of 90s noise. Riff-laded anthems such as The Drowners, So Young, and Animal Nitrate sit alongside dramatic ballads like She's Not Dead, Sleeping Pills, and The Next Life and drawn-out, druggy album tracks Pantomime Horse and Breakdown. It's Suede's quintessential album, and definitely the place to start with the band.

2. Night Thoughts (2016)

Night Thoughts is more or less the perfect Suede album. This incredible late-career masterpiece takes the soaring melodies of their debut, the dramatic melancholy of Dog Man Star, and the sheer catchiness of Coming Up, and combines it with the master craftmanship characteristic of the band post-reunion. From pop gems like Outsiders and No Tomorrow to sweeping ballads like Pale Snow and Learning to Be, these songs are as indelible as their early career favourites.

1. Dog Man Star (1994)

Dog Man Star is not the "perfect" Suede album, but it's their best anyway. If Bernard Butler had his way, this would have been a double-CD prog epic, and the album's recording was marred by tension over its direction. Even in its "compromised" (according to Butler) form, it's a sprawling, grandiose record. Two thirds of the way through, Dog Man Star has already delivered magnificent pop songs like The Wild Ones and New Generation, haunting ballads such as Daddy's Speeding, and the sleazy, drugged-up glam of We Are the Pigs and This Hollywood Life—and it's far from finished. The incredible final third of the album finds Anderson scaling new vocal heights with The 2 of Us and the bombastic orchestral finale Still Life, while the 9-minute The Asphalt World has the best guitar work Butler ever did.

Now, here's my wife's ranking (I love her choices here; this is a really cool list).

1. Night Thoughts

2. The Blue Hour

3. Coming Up

4. Suede

5. Dog Man Star

6. A New Morning

7. Autofiction

8. Bloodsports

9. Head Music