index Reviews Singles The Face: Stay New Musical Express: Not Alone The Face: Not Alone New Musical Express: You Must Go On Albums Q Magazine: People Move On Q Magazine: People Move On New Musical Express: People Move On Q Magazine: Friends and Lovers New Musical Express: Friends and Lovers Singles: THE FACE - Stay (Creation) He's back, he's solo and he sings like a girl! The former Suede guitarist and bona fide-orchestral-pop godhead enters the new year's fray with an epic lament that will please Radiohead fans and Seventies rock enthusiasts alike. Good song; good singing; monstrously-widescreen production sound. NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS - Not Alone (Creation) Single of the week 'Stay' was gorgeous. It was also a bit like 'Babe' by Styx in the 1970s that all the boys loved on the sly and bought for the girl they fancied on Valentine's Day. Such essential, dramatic, sentimental folly lurks, surely, within the enigmatic soul of Bernard Butler - he was in Suede after all and just look at the man's hair - because his is the keenest appreciation of the preposterous cheesefest in contemporary art. 'Not Alone' is a king-sized Fortnum & Mason speciality cheese hamper which begins with an exploding orchestral serenade and is his personal version of 'Yes', a five-generational saga of flight-to-freedom starring the spirit of Peter O'Toole with a beguiling Motown sashay befitting The Ramones' version of 'Baby I Love You'. It also features the lyrical caper, "I won't need to show you might heart/'Cos all I need in my hands is an electric guitar", after which he prangs his beloved 'axe' with comedy-noodle gusto which may indicate his exit from Suede was based on jarring capacity of self-mockery. This is magnificent. Again. THE FACE - Not Alone (Creation) A classic (II*). Yes, the year really gets going now as the Butler boy follows up the epic 'Stay' with the equally epic, but more pop-tastic, 'Not Alone'. This builds upon the string-laden burst of (McAlmont collaboration) 'Yes', but actually manages to outstrip even that. Does he sing good? You betcha! "A classic (I)" was 'Teardrop' by Massive Attack... lots of classics that month, apparently... NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS - You Must Go On (Creation) Cor! On the cover, Bernard 'Geezer' Butler (gurly hair, moody stare, Alan Partridge-style 'casual' jacket and an eye-catching bulge in his tatillatingly-tight pre-shrunk Levi's) swaggers arrogantly down a marina jetty while a bikini-clad gurly-bird and a fat and ugly old bloke look on lustfully and murmur, "Coo! Look at the arse on THAT!" In the background, meanwhile, another gurly-bird is so overcome with that she has tossed herself off the jetty in frustration. And who can blame her? Unfortunately the music contained within is unmitigated let's-pretend-it's-1967 hippy-student retro-wank. Shit, Geezer, what's going on? You were good for a bit, remember? When you teamed up with that high-pitched disco chap with the amusing hair? I'd give him a ring and see if he'll have you back. Or, even better, stop poncing around, get yourself a denim waistcoat, some tats and a tash and join a proper, balls-out, unreconstructed metal combo - like Kid Rock's mob - where your undoubted mastery of the art of look-at-me cock-rock geetar-god noodlewankery will be properly appreciated. SORTED! Albums: Q MAGAZINE - People Move On (Creation) rating: 4 out of 5 Self-assured A new career, without indie, without Brett, but with the ghost of Albatross Alan McGee is not prone to understatement. My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields is a genius, he'll tell you. Three Colours Red are the best live band since the Pistols. And Creation's most recent acquisition Bernard Butler is Neil Young. Okay, let's look at the evidence. Butler was 19 when he joined Suede, 22 when they had their first hit, 24 when he quit, and 27 now. Neil Young quit Buffalo Springfield aged 23 (they had a big hit, For What It's Worth), his first solo album came out at 24, and by 27, Harvest was at Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic. So, the bird-like Butler is three albums, a big hit and umpteen sales behind the old warhorse, but People Move On could prove a formidable catapult. Somewhere between Suede and here, he's literally found his voice ("I think I always had it in me," he claims, predictably). Although grubby, Suede always looked and sounded important, and Butler's taken a chunk of that with him. By track two, You Just Know, he sounds on top of the world (looking down on Creation, perhaps), a Tasmanian devil spinning wildly, Youngian guitar licks flying, that voice worn proudly as a new shirt. Self-written and produced (and he plays everything but the drums), these 12 songs exhibit a rare self-assurance, but not just in the upfront, widescreen bluster of singles Not Alone and Stay - it also seeps from the many slower numbers, In Vain, I'm Tired, You Light The Fire. Away from the vocal mannerisms of an Anderson or a McAlmont, Butler's songs replace skyscraping artifice with down home authenticity, evoking another time (1972? 1974? Pre-punk, certainly), another place (some imagined America). There's a dash of Jackson Browne in here, a dab of Elvis Costello, Ferry, Bowie... and "indie" just isn't in it. The last three years' fannying about as a celebrity sideman were clearly not for nought. It begins like Fleetwood Mac's Albatross, and never really lets go of that lazy evening vibe. Any residual Suede-angst is siphoned off through the lyrics, leaving a debut set that's handsome, unpretentious and timeless. At least McGee was wrong about Three Colours Red. Andrew Collins Standout tracks: 'Not Alone', 'You Just Know', 'You Light The Fire' Like this, try these: Neil Young Harvest, Suede Suede, The Seahorses Do It Yourself Q MAGAZINE - People Move On (Creation) I'm not sure, but I'm guessing this review was part of a 'records of 1998' feature in Q Magazine. After the guitarist's towering musical edifices (and equally epic ego clashes) with Suede and McAlmont, it seemed that ambition would overtake ability with a self-penned self-produced solo flight. Instead Butler showed he had more than one string to his bow with this engaging portfolio of much simpler material: world-weary reactions to private troubles drawing on a variety of mood-evoking pre-punk guitar styles from Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac to Neil young and Nick Drake - old fashioned musicianship in a modern setting that surpasses mere sampling. Where he goes from here remains to ve seen but tghis was an impressive unveiling of his versatility. In a word: old-fashioned. NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS - People Move On (Creation) rating: 7 out of 10 Melodrama Gold Now the 70's are back and all the rage, it may be as well to recall a character from that era, a taciturn guitar mercenary who hired himself out fairly anonymously to myriad records before his debut solo project propelled him into the spotlight. When 'Tubular Bells' made Mike Oldfield a superstar and fledgling label boss Richard Branson a millionaire, the effect was devastating. Virtually overnight Oldfield, under the influence of a psychiatric process called exegesis, was transformed from a sensitive artist in flares to a tank-topped,bird-ogling, beer-swilling uber-bloke. It was scary to see the way he wore his new-found supernatural normality like armour, he was so desperate to belong. His was the unhappiest happiness anyone ever saw. There is something of Mike Oldfield about Bernard Butler's debut solo album and not just because both are extraordinary guitarists. The foppish Butler hasn't discovered the Shaun Ryder within or anything crazy like that, it's just that there is something unsettling and intensely unnatural about the way the shy, sensitive Butler is suddenly so happy to lay his life bare before us with such bright abandon. Maybe the man has just found true contentment but there is an element lurking within the pages of this diary - which is what 'People Move On' really amounts to - which suggests an accident waiting to happen. Something just ain't right. On the surface, these songs seem straightforwardaccounts of quitting Suede, being frustrated with other projects for a couple of years, having a baby and finding oneself. Fair enough. But somehow Butler's shining exorcism just doesn't wash. It sounds too good to be true, like something he had to do. It may seem a tiny point of semantics but the baroque nature of his new calm betrays the vast psychological gulf between wishing to do something and needing to do it. Maybe it's the shock of discovering that he has a voice beneath that fringe - Butler was always an unwilling interviewee and never sang with Suede. Hearing the easy way he unfurls these songs is a bit like watching the traumatised kid in The Tin Drum suddenly discover vocal expression but, instead of a primal scream, he delivers a drawl so easy and carefree you feel there must be something sinister in it, held back, hidden, waiting to crack. The classical structure of the songs is suspect too - the way 'Stay' builds so deliberately and obviously into an epic, the way the title track unfolds just how we know it will with absolutely no surprises - that suggests emotional camouflage. Butler relies on a lot of heroes on this record. He does his 'Cinnamon Girl' Neil Young thing marvellously well on 'You Just Know', he does his Nick Drake thing miraculously well on 'You Light The Fire', he does his Fleetwood Mac-meets-'Dark Side Of The Moon' Floyd thing with casual aplomb on 'Woman I Know'and he does his super-realist Motown thing superbly on 'Not Alone' - and the fascinating thing is that they all achieve what may well be the opposite effect of their intention. In reproducing these styles so well, Butler seems to be asking us to concentrate on his musical expertise when what the listener is really forced to ask is why/what is he hiding? The lyrics are telling us one thing - I've been through it but I'm OK, honest - and the songs themselves are telling us something else - I just don't know what to do with myself. And it's this tension that makes 'People Move On' a far deeper record than it might at first appear. In other words, just because he's found a voice and the words to go with it doesn't necessarily mean those words are telling the full story. The lyrics - and the title - of 'People Move On' are suspiciously obvious and self-explanatory. But Bernard Butler has relied on his guitar to express himself up until this point and it's his guitar that still betrays his intent with a deeper honesty. There is hardly an occasion on 'People Move On' when the guitar doesn't say something different to the words. Whether it's the absurdly Grand Guignol climax to the creepy 'Autograph' or the way the big solos in 'When You Grow' transform a song from a father to a child as moving and sentimental as Spencer Tracy reassuring Elizabeth Taylor over midnight milk in the kitchen in Father Of The Bride into a grandstanding epic up there with Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'The Power Of Love', Bernard Butler's weakness for melodrama is hearteningly disturbing. This is the genius we remember from Suede, a drama queen on a par with the arse-slapping Brett, a talent unable to resist the temptation to over-elaborate, to take the normal and aggrandise it into something immortal, something freakish, something dissatisfied. People may well move on but old habits die hard and old neuroseS die harder. Steve Sutherland Q MAGAZINE - Friends And Lovers (Creation) rating: 2 out of 5 When Bernard Butler, a malnourished Johnny Marr obsessive from Potters Bar, left Suede in 1994 (to be replaced, weirdly, by a Bernard Butler obsessive from Dorset), he seemed destined to follow his mentor's career plan. There were a lot of dilettantish axeman colaborations and a seeming lack of direction. When one of those collaborations, 1995's gorgeous Yes recorded with vocalist David McAlmont, thrust him right back into the pop limelight, he blinked owlishly and was gone again. McAlmont and Butler parted in some acrimony, but the die was nevertheless cast. Implausibly, Bernard Butler - frail, lank, unsociable, cat-loving vegetarian - was a pop star. Since then a solo album proper, last year's People Move On, has established him as a contemporary rock artiste if a coterie one: Butler himself has commented disparagingly on his recent sales. Friends & Lovers has much of that first record's obvious virtues - an easy grasp of classic rock structures, powerful arrangements - but is also significantly grittier and tougher, losing, for instance, the exultant strings that dominated that first record. It begins brightly with the title track, the kind of swaggering rock anthem Lenny Kravitz would make if he weren't largely a gimmick designed for MTV. Indeed, all of the album's best moments are crowded into its first half - the languid No Easy Way Out ,with its pretty Jim Webb-ish changes, or the bolshy, catchy I'd Do It Again If I Could, which could be Deep Purple at their poppiest. In contrast, the record's latter half is less successful: the songs feel like tired re-treads of earlier triumphs and there are some pointless indulgences such as Has Your Mind Got Away? Butler's clearly had when he devoted eight-and-a-half minutes to this tissue-thin composition, great solo notwithstanding. On that score, the guitar work is characteristically adept if slightly muted and Butler's voice is serviceable, if liable to fall into "rawk" pastiche too easily. All told, Friends & Lovers is a perfectly decent set with the odd flash of incendiary brilliance and rather more frequent longueurs. If it's unlikely to win legions of converts, it's equally unlikely to disappoint devoted acolytes. Head: Tunnel Visionary Sell: He's found his niche and he's sticking to it. Standout tracks: 'Friends And Lovers', 'No Easy Way Out', 'I'd Do It Again If I Could' Like this, try these: Fleetwood Mac Then Play On, Nick Drake Bryter Layter, Kula Shaker K NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS - Friends And Lovers (Creation) rating: 6 out of 10 Ready Sturdy Go! He might have the last laugh, after all. Not that you'd be able to tell, of course, him not being the kind of boy it would be a pleasure to take to the circus, and not that you'd call it a laugh, exactly. Still, some kind of triumphant flickering of the vital signs might well be in order for Bernard Butler, once reviled by his former bandmates, filed away in many minds under 'D' for 'denim' and maybe 'dull', and now releasing his second album to follow the modest golden success of the first. Suede, meanwhile, are rhyming "mouse" with "house", while McAlmost is little more than a pink-satin blip in the popular conscience. Somehow, the one with the cloudy charisma and the interest in guitars has been touched by the hand of longevity. As victories go, it's hardly on a Roman scale, yet now everyone's got over the miracle of this quiet frown-and-fringe actually opening his mouth and singing, Butler's talent is clear and unfogged once more. 'Friends And Lovers' is an elegant, classy album, full of songs of quality. And if that doesn't make you want to curl up under a nice warm blanket and go to sleeeep, then you clearly have synapses of steel. This is problematic. Because, for songs like the learning-to-love-again grandeur of 'Cocoon' or the annexed Abbey Road harmonies of 'Let's Go Away', you would happily give this record a mortgage, a character reference, even the keys to your house when you go on holiday. Your heart and soul, though? Your time and desire? Not for pretty domestic hushes like 'Everyone I Know Is Falling Apart' and 'You'll Feel It When You're Mine', which tap 20-something commitment issues with a certain maudlin style; not even for the Jim Steinman-produces-The Verve 'derangement' of 'Has Your Mind Got Away', which takes Butler's epic rock tendencies to the operatic dimension. While his old acquaintances hang around the pop market with the flash trash and, yes, bitter glitter, Bernard is the M&S of musical endeavour: well-crafted, reliable, properly stitched. As hard as you tug at the seams of the California-style MOR of 'No Easy Way Out', or the Bowie yelp of 'I'd Do It Again If I Could', there's no real emotional give, just the hallmark of Solo Artist Quality sewn in the middle. There might be lyrical honesty, there might be guitar immensity, but there's something just not happening here. 'Friends And Lovers' isn't so much the sound of all passion spent, as carefully invested in a savings account. Unfortunately, it's low interest. Victoria Segal index