One of the most left-field of the bands to emergeas part of the early 90s britpop movement, suede'squirky musical tendencies were at first dismissed astoo weird to be marketable. but something about the band's "slum-glam" image& trippy blend of rock & attitude started attracting a huge youth market, & it wasn't long before the musicrags were proclaiming the group as the next great wonder. the band justified that tag in some way with 3 intriguing  albums that reflected the mood of thetimes among british youth.

    but their success was never on the scale of their britpop cousins , oasis & blur, mainly because they were harder to pin down.  this latest offering, the band's fourth, is aheady mix of psychedelic percolations, 60's popflavours & some influences that are not easy todefine. that's what makes the album so arresting yet vaguely familiar. the opener, electricity, immediately takes you to a time when living rooms were thicksmoke, & that mood is sustained by the tracks that follow, even if a few seem strangely sweet.

    singer brett anderson even sounds a bit like those high-voiced vocalists of british pop bands from the 60s on such reflective pieces as down & indianstrings. like most recent recordings that try to maximise the compact disc's storage capacity, this has a fewtracks that could have been offloaded. but at leastthey're almost as tuneful as the best cuts here.

performance : 3.5 out of 5 sound : 3 out of 5 ( 3 is good, 4 is very good, 5 is excellent )