Dog Man Star by Suede

Dog Man Star, Suede's second album, came out on Nude Records in October 1994, and it's a grand, doomed, gorgeous thing made by a band coming apart. Ed Buller produced it at Master Rock in London early that year, but tension between singer Brett Anderson and guitarist Bernard Butler boiled over and Butler walked out before the sessions were done, leaving session players to help finish some tracks. Mat Osman on bass and Simon Gilbert on drums held down the rhythm section.

Where the debut wore its Bowie and Smiths debts on its sleeve, this one sprawls wider, all melodrama and swooning ambition, and it swerved hard away from the Britpop pack just as lad pop took over. It still went to number three in the UK and went gold, though American critics were split and some called it pretentious. Time has been kinder: NME put it at number 31 on its 500 greatest albums list in 2013.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.