1993. My first year at Architecture School at the University of Auckland. 18, clumsy and shy. Seven years of private schooling had given me a fairly skewed view of the world, and University was the first time I’d really ventured too far from my white/churchy/North Shore roots. (Although it certainly seemed that there were a disproportionately large number of other ex-private school students at architecture school, so it’s not like I stuck out too far.) There were new social circles, a few new friends, new routines and a gobsmackingly large amount of reading to be done. It was tiring and intense and, other than the typical emotional/romantic anxieties that effect the average 18 year old boy, mostly fairly enjoyable. I learnt about Modernism and Postmodernism, found out who Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier were, and discovered that I really didn’t want to be an architect. If I was going to name the defining event of 1993, though, it wouldn’t be any of the above. It would be the release of Suede’s debut album.
I’d fallen head-over-heels in love with The Smiths in 1992, and by the beginning of ’93 was a card-carrying Moz-disciple. Bequiffed and sideburned and wearing Dr Martens, I found myself at odds with the prevailing fashion/musical scene of the time, which mostly revolved around the (then) holy trinity of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (although no song was quite as ubiquitous in early 1993 as Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’) and the wearing of plaid shirts and army pants. Whilst I quite liked Nirvana (but that’s another story/blog post) I’d given Pearl Jam a cursory listen but couldn’t really abide the warbling vocals/sludgy guitar sounds/lack of melodies, and really disliked the ‘Chilli Peppers. Having listened to The Smiths’ and Morrissey’s albums constantly for almost a year, I was really looking for something new. But that certainly wasn’t to be found on BFM, the university’s radio station, which had sacrificed itself on the alter of grunge and was playing ‘the Seattle sound’ non-stop.
Some time in the late autumn, my friend Tsering (probably the world’s only Tibetan Goth, ever) organised for a bunch of friends to come over for a Smiths/Cure night. She’d scored a VHS tape of a bunch of Smiths TV appearances, and we all gathered ’round to watch fascinating archival footage on a grainy, bleeding fourth generation videocassette. Sometime late that night, once The Smiths tape had finished and been heartily discussed, she put on a tape of some things she’d taped off TV. At this point I’d heard of Suede – they’d been mentioned in a review of the then-current Jesus Jones album Peverse, and described as a ‘retro’ band (at this time, ‘retro’ was a fairly new thing – I guess the 80s had been all about ‘the new’ and the 1970s were still considered ‘the decade that taste forgot’) so I’d kinda written them off as some kind of pub-rock revival thing. However, a few seconds into hearing Animal Nitrate, I knew I’d found my new band. The singer looked absolutely, fascinatingly androgynous, and the guitarist flounced around like a proper rock start. Having not really listened to Bowie or any other 70s glam, it sounded absolutely fresh and exciting and like nothing I’d ever heard before. The following Monday I walked down to Marbecks on my way home from University, and bought the album on cassette.
I have no idea how many times I listened to that album over the next few months, but it was probably at least once a day. It was the perfect album for a gloomy Auckland winter, and at 46 minutes, almost the exact length of the bus ride from Glenfield to the Auckland CBD. If I put it on as I hopped on the bus, I could be fairly certain of hearing the fade out of The Next Life as the bus pulled in to Victoria Street. There are still parts of the North Shore that I associate with particular bits of songs from this record, and even though Glenfield was a million miles from ‘all the love and poison of London’, the bus route through the industrial heart of the Shore probably wasn’t all that different from Brett Anderson’s ‘satellite town’ of Haywards Heath. At least, that’s what I told myself.
18 years later, it’s still one of my all-time favourite albums, and, in my opinion, one of the best, most fully-formed debut albums of all time. It has also just been reissued in a 2CD/DVD deluxe edition, with all the relevant b-sides, a clutch of previously unreleased demos, some rarities and two concerts worth of live footage. It’s a wonderful package – the band have curated their past lovingly, warts and all. I really hope there’s some 18 year out there, listening to it on the bus as it takes him to university.
