ELECTRICITY

Suede

Back in the early 1990s Suede were pants. Let's not kid ourselves, they were just a noisy raucous bunch of amateurs and songs like Animal Nitrate, although the music press pounced upon them like love-crazed bunnies and proclaimed them to be works of genius, were in fact no better and often worse than whatever else was out at the time. Then they released Trash and all of a sudden they became quite listenable. Actually, they were good. So here we are, two years later, and Suede have returned. Are they still good? The answer is yes. Is the new single a giant leap forward? The answer is sort of. It sounds better, there's more going on, but deep down you feel this could've come off their last album. Who cares? It's really quite enjoyable and rocks out large-style. Thank heavens for that.

FILL HER UP

Gene

So it's a song about drinking. So what? Chumbawamba did one two years ago. They got knocked down, but they got up again. Apparently, we're never going to keep them down. As for Gene, this turgid Smiths-reject song gets knocked down faster than Nottingham Forest. Unlike Forest, this hasn't got a hope in hell of getting back up again. Lads, the drawing board went thataway...

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! 42

Various (album)

I thought Now 33 was as low as it could get, being so desperate for songs it had to include two songs by the same band (Oasis, as it happened), but I was wrong. There used to be one or two songs that would lift a Now album out of the gutter trash that is the myriad of Huge Hits and The Box compilations, but those songs are missing here. Basically, it's almost entirely kiddiepop and if you're over 16, you'll probably hate it. If you want to know how a Now album should be done, dig out a copy of Now 7 or Now 17. Wait for Now 43 and try to forget this ever happened.