Weathered but not torn, Brit-pop band Suede returns to Athens
Suede, one of the bands that kick-started the Brit-pop movement in the early 1990s, will be returning to the same venue it played several years ago on its first visit, the Vrachon Theater in Athens, for one performance tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Suede will be joined by one of the more frequently visiting British acts in recent years, Puressence, as the support act. Now with five albums behind them, the most recent being last year’s well-received «A New Morning,» the act, once widely hailed as Britain’s best new band by local music press, has had to persevere through testing phases. Antagonism between frontman Brett Anderson and Suede’s original guitarist and co-songwriter Bernard Butler toward the end of recording sessions for the group’s second album, 1994’s «Dog Man Star,» almost led to the band’s demise. Butler abandoned the group a little before the album’s completion and was replaced by an amateur 17-year-old guitarist, Richard Oakes, which, at the time, was viewed as an unwise move. But the group has held on. Following a couple of less celebrated album releases in the late 1990s, the group’s latest effort, last year’s «A New Morning,» has received positive reviews. The group’s guitar-heavy, dark and sensual sound, heavily inspired by the legendary new wave band the Smiths, proved popular in the UK and around Europe but has failed to appeal to US listeners on a mainstream level.
