08 June 2005

The Tears - Islington Academy, London - Wednesday 8th June 2005

The Tears (basically Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, the more talented 2 from Suede) released their debut album this week, and played this gig for XFM to showcase it. Tickets were free to people that entered XFM's competition, and judging by the space in the venue, not that many people did!

Bands like this, essentially a reformed Suede with different backing musicians, are not always a good idea, and The Tears are no exception. I appreciate that they give themselves a different name to distance themselves from Suede, and also to avoid having to play Suede songs, but that would really have worked best if their new songs were of equivalent quality. They are very far from it, so they would actually have played a better gig if they'd just played old Suede songs.

The new album is passable, and inoffensive enough, but just does absolutely nothing to capture the imagination. It would be a fairly turgid debut album even from a completely new band, but when you can still remember the music these guys used to make, it could (and arguably should) be a career-killer of a comedown.

Worth the admission fee (just), but I would run a mile from this if I saw it happening again.

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