At the turn of January, eleven-years-gone (minus the reunion shows) Britpop legends Suede returned with a claustrophobic, black-and-white video for their sprawling comeback track “Barriers,” from forthcoming sixth studio LP Bloodsports. Now, the second single “It Starts and Ends With You” gets a glossier but equally straightforward performance clip impaled with lens flare effects. On a hazy gray soundstage crowned by lights, Brett Anderson swings his mike and mugs in profile as a rear spotlight beams over his shoulder, casting him in semi-shadow. Repeat that cinematographic portraiture with each band member, and there’s the video’s concept: more lens flares than aboard J. J. Abram’s Starship Enterprise.
But its simplicity keeps the glammy/gloomy sound and lyrics of “It Starts and Ends With You” in laser focus. Anderson is “a hairline crack in a radiator / leaking life” in this carnal ode to love and sex, themes that will reportedly recur on the LP proper. “[The album’s] 10 furious songs, for me, have reclaimed from ourselves what Suede was always about; drama, melody and noise,” Anderson said in a press release.
Bloodsports is out via Ingrooves/Fontant on March 19, their first studio effort since 2002’s A New Morning.