Let’s not beat around the bush here, The Tears were rubbish. Seeing how many years Suede obsessives had prayed that Butler and Anderson would bury the hatchet and return to past glories, the result was merely a watered down version of the good old days, at best, and at worst a hideous and slightly embarrassing attempt to grasp hold of former glories.

Thus, we have to admit we did not have high hopes for Brett’s first solo effort, but luckily the boy seems to have rediscovered his romance, rediscovered his soul and produced a record that can sit confidently next to Suede and Dogmanstar. Phew. There are no big ‘Trash’ style stompalongs here though, nor any Bowie glamfests, no this is an introverted Brett, it is no mistake that iTunes lists its genre as Easy Listening…

One look at the titles shows that we are in classic Anderson territory – ‘Love Is Dead’, ‘Intimacy’, ‘The Infinite Kiss’, sure it is no party record, it is a collection of songs to play huddled alone under neon loneliness. The highlight is the beautiful ‘The More We Possess The Less We Own Of Ourselves’, but all 11 tracks here show that perhaps when we were all thinking that Bernard Butler left the band with all the old Suede magic, perhaps we were looking in the wrong direction.