August 20–27, 1998

critic pick|jazz

Bernard Butler

For guitarist Bernard Butler of Britain's favorite quartet, Suede (or London Suede as they're known in the United States), the world of the solo career beckoned. And unlike many an axe-grinder who leaves his roost, he's proved, with his new album, People Move On (Creation/Columbia), that he's got surprising weight as a singer and songwriter.

Butler takes curious chances on his debut. With rich string arrangements and a gentle six-string touch, his saccharine-sweet voice licks the chords of "Woman I Know" with near-embarrassing purity. The same can be said for the '70s-style stuff like the title track and "A Change Of Heart." The combination of background voices, flickering pianos and vibraphones rustle beneath Butler's soft, breathy vocals. His voice, if you wanted to be unkind, has the same tenor as Bread's David Gates or Graham Nash from his Hollies days. But throughout People's gentler moments that voice moves like a clever cat through the brush. It's during Pink Floydian tunes like "You Just Know" and the strangulating guitar solos that pockmark Butler's ballads that he pounces. His guitar (and showy string arrangements played courtesy of Marc Almond's Venomettes) course through his non-stop erotic creation—much like onetime Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson. At the very heart of People, it's Ronson's sense of guitar-shaking, phase-shifting string sounds (prominent on all of Bowie's finest '70s-era work) and goofy tenderness that haunts Butler. Butler celebrates this woolly winsomeness with great passion—a welcome surprise to a rock marketplace fraught with insincerity.

Bernard Butler, Thu., Aug. 20, The Trocadero, 10th & Arch, 922-6888.

-a.d. amorosi