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Everyone knows Oasis when it comes to Britpop throughout the 1990s. Americans fall heads over heels with Blur thanks to ‘Song 1’. A lot of fans know of Pulp as the arguable peak of the scene with 1995’s Different Class. Everyone started their journey off with Suede. In 1991, years after the end of the Smiths who lit the whole indie world in flames, the London-based band fronted by singer Brett Anderson charges through. With them comes a beloved debut that features soaring guitar riffs, holistic high notes, and lyrics about hooking up with a gender-ambiguous love interest. The self-titled Suede would become one of the frontrunning entries to making alternative music the mainstream favourite over the next decade.

Thus, in 1994, when Dog Man Star was released, Suede still stuck to their formula with a lot of twists and turns and thunders of tragedies. Their star guitarist Bernard Butler lost his father prior to their major tour and with that goes his patience. He could not quite keep his feelings in with his bandmates. Instead, what that had led to is an unstable work ethic where he developed a goal of making the album that goes far beyond the band’s indie pop emphasis. Drugs, tension, and sweet and auteur-like direction assumed control of most of the recording session throughout first half of 1994 until the 8th of July when Butler called quits following an ultimatum between him and record producer Ed Buller. He was shortly replaced afterwards by Richard Oakes just a month before the album’s release.

Contentious as he was at the time of recording, Butler’s vision pays off in dividends. Tracks like the grand finale in ‘Still Life’ or ‘The Wild Ones’ contain more orchestral elements like bowed strings in the violins or the use of the piano. Other songs such as ‘This Hollywood Life’, ‘’Daddy’s Speeding’, and ‘Introducing the Band’ pushes their diversity and production to the limit like the use of Blues chord, ethereal vocal alteration, or Tabla-sounding percussion. Capping off is the whopping nine-minute epic in ‘The Asphalt World’ with its more progressive song structure and instrumental break alongside a psychedelic use of synths to add to the ecstasy-fuelled journey. Many would have hoped for a simple series of potential hit singles. No one would expect the band to have ever gone far in their artistic endeavours, long before Pulp and Blur had done.

The reviews surrounding Dog Man Star are largely reserved especially in the United States where many were put off by its aspirations. For instance, the Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield deemed it to be pretentious for its overly flowery lyrics and the “dark, druggy guitar textures.” On Entertainment Weekly, Chuck Eddy noted that while the band works best when they stick to their usual style, their Gothic attempts feel ineffectual. In Britain, consensus agreed that it works wonderfully overall even if it feels a tad bit overindulgent at times. A piece by the Independent’s Ben Thompson picks up on the record’s symphonic influences and compares the record positively to an X-rated cinematic film. Funnily enough, there are a series of music videos made to document the band’s touring of the album itself.

Now, the remastered re-release of Dog Man Star proves that yes, Suede are not pulling off the brakes when they use their time to go all in on their direction. ‘The Asphalt World’, already a grand statement of the band’s most ambitious works, was originally recorded to be longer as does ‘The Wild Ones’. This leads to complex guitar solos and a more densely packed textures within the songs akin to the contemporary shoegaze even if the vocals might be a bit too clear for the comparison to be in sync. ‘Still Life’ is even more Baroque in instrumentation on the Orchestral variant compared to its final version. Recordings are done on an excerpt of an NME interview which went into detail about the highlights of the record like ‘The Wild Ones’ or ‘Still Life’. 

Done under a more updated mixing to keep the album up with the freshest records of today, Dog Man Star shines in many ways. For a start, many consider it to be Suede’s magnum opus with its soaring artsy outlook. Butler’s hands-on approach, while it erodes his relationship with the band to the point of quitting, enables so many of the rich layers of the album to work wonders with his legacy as a guitarist all but secured. Later music artists like Bloc Party’s Kele Okerele and Travis’ Dougie Payne name the record as among their favourites. A featured article from the Quietus made note of how it precedes a wave of moody, affective projects done by bands like Radiohead, Spiritualized, and many more. The mainstream press might one day catch up to Dog Man Star as the crown jewel of Britpop. Fans across the indie spectrum would clamour it as one of the finest to have come out of the United Kingdom.