by Clemency Grave | Staff Cynic & Music Review
Review of ‘Sci-Fi Lullabies II’ by London Suede
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Sci-Fi Lullabies II isn’t an album for everyone, and that’s exactly the point. Like Sci-Fi Lullabies I, it’s a collection of b-sides. For an album, every song must fit together in the narrative. They tell a story that fits the theme. B-side Compilations are a collection of short stories that stand on their own. It’s the secret handshake, the velvet rope, a whisper in a dark alley, the midnight FM signal you can only find by accident. These aren’t throwaways. They’re the deep cuts you hum to yourself in the dark, the confessionals left behind on the editing room floor. And if that’s lost on you, if you’re the type who needs every chorus spoon-fed, maybe you deserve whatever Mr. STE is shoveling at you over at his beige little webzine.
“The Sadness In You, The Sadness In Me”
You can tell a band by how they mourn. This track is the ache after the drama, the echo in the apartment after the door slams shut and she walks down the hallway. Brett’s voice hovers in that liminal space between apology and accusation.
“And this is your moment of truth / So step from the page / And the whole damn world is waiting for you / It’s time to step from the page / And let’s rip up this perfect day / It’s time to push it away / And let’s rip up this perfect day / When the sadness in you meets the sadness in me / Let’s start changing our lives”
-it’s a lyric so direct, so honest, a certain reviewer STE would call it “maudlin” before skipping to the next promo download. But the rest of us? But we know an open wound when we hear it.
“Dawn Chorus”
This song is the sound of two souls negotiating the front lines of mutual need. It’s that moment when you realize you’re not in love with a person; you’re in love with the way they almost complete you, right up until they pull away and leave you with your hands full of empty morning. “Dawn Chorus” is for anyone who knows the danger of gentle people and the heartbreak of always wanting more than you can hold.
“Your gentleness is not a weakness / Your tenderness is not a fault / You tell me you don’t feel completed / But you could stab me with a word / You could crush me with the thoughts / Singing the dawn chorus / Shedding your skin before us / Touching the sky with your hands / Till we are together again / I have you but I don’t possess you / I touch you but I can’t control”
[On the subject of B-Sides]
Let’s pause to make something clear. B-sides aren’t collector filler and landfill. They’re the negative space that lets the singles shine. They’re for people who actually listen, three times, minimum, with the lights off and a notebook or diary handy. STE once called B-sides “bonus content for completists.” Which just proves he’s never needed music more than company.
“Cheap”
If you’ve ever worshiped someone whose entire life looks like it came from a clearance rack and still found them more radiant than any Soho art student, “Cheap” is your hymn. This track is a poisoned valentine to the beautiful broke. It’s about someone who’s never read De Beauvoir but somehow understands the condition of womanhood better than anyone with a degree. It’s about someone whose entire life is “underqualified,” untelevised, and untrained—yet somehow, still vital, still real.
“You don’t know any famous people / Your life is never televised / You never had a decent teacher / You never studied genocide / You never read De Beauvoir / You never had the time / But everything that you say is wonderful / You’re cheap as the perfume that you wear / You’re cheap as the airbrushed women cheap as air / You’re cheap as Americana and you see / You’re cheap as your bottled suntan / Cheap as cheap as me”
“What Violet Says”
If “Cheap” is about loving what’s left behind, “What Violet Says” is about surviving in the city’s undertow. It’s a song for anyone who’s lived through the night and isn’t sure if they’re coming up for air or just one more dive. Suede doesn’t flinch from the grit. They write it in neon that shines through the foggy early morning.
Top track for 3AM film-noire subway rides and existential aches:
“The chocolate kiss that sealed her fate / Is fading like mornings dew we break / Shes scraping her boots on frozen dirt / Her heels are plastic, rock the brass / The drip of the tap up the stairs won’t stop / The twist of the key inside the lock / The cellophane taped around her mouth / And this is the desperate edge of now / The sound of the subway is all we chase”
[Regarding the subject of ‘Critics’]
If you read a review that says this album “lacks cohesion,” close your browser and walk away. That’s like saying a diary isn’t a novel. The critics who call it “inessential” are the same ones who never flip the cassette, who think every playlist needs to be algorithmically perfect, who have a stack of promo CDs they are trying to get through in a single afternoon. They want everything up front, on the A-side, with Spotify credits and hashtags. They read other reviews before setting pen to paper and writing their own. No wonder their lives sound like an ad.
“Heroin”
There’s no romance here, no anti-hero swagger. Just the monotony of dependency, the soft, wet rot of the soul. This isn’t a ballad, it’s an obituary. If you’ve ever been in love with the thing that’s killing you, this song isn’t catharsis; it’s acknowledgment.
Top lyric for the lost and the losing:
“Took me on a limb / You’ve taken everything / Everything / As the clouds come in / As the rain begins / Rain begins / Heroin / I’m out of it / Heroin / I’m out of it.”
This is where the bruises (and needle tracks?) show. STE would probably say it’s “on the nose.” But he’s never needed anything so bad he’d write a song about it. Pity, that.
“There Is No Me If There Is No You”
A coda, a confession. Love song? Maybe. “When I caught you looking / When you tripped me up / I knew you were dangerous / But just because you knew when to stop” -there’s admiration and resentment, both. Loving someone dangerous is its own high; surviving them, its own withdrawal.
“Desperate lovers. Petrol eyes”. Suede always did love their cinematic images. This one’s smeared mascara under a flickering streetlamp in a bad part of town, the rush and recoil of intimacy with someone who’s an accelerant, not a balm.
“The more you win, the less you’d try.” Ah, the law of diminishing returns, written in eyeliner on the bathroom mirror after a 4am argument. The closer you get, the further you drift.
And then the naked, co-dependent plea: “Show me one friend of mine / There is no me if there is no you.” All the bravado gone. What’s left is the hard admission: all this drama, all these sad, glittering nights, were never really about the world. It was always about finding yourself in someone else’s gaze, or how you got lost there.
In Closing:
I could go on. 18 tracks total, eighteen chances to melt into Suede’s character sketches and vignettes and drift away. If you’re reading this, and you think Sci-Fi Lullabies II is just for superfans, maybe you’re right. Maybe you should leave it for the ones who believe B-sides matter, who don’t need a byline on a corporate site to know what’s real. But if you do listen, really listen, you’ll find the magic that Mr. STE missed entirely.
Until then, I’ll be at Sigs, flipping through the stacks, waiting for the next lost masterpiece to find me.
Be First to Comment