Day 364: Suicide – A Way of Life

‍ It’s the second to last day before I’ve completed the year, so I thought I’d go for a bit of Suicide today. Their self-titled album was a rare 10 for me, and I liked it so much that I haven’t listened to it since. I just liked hearing it so much that I feel like I need to savour it and not wear it out, maybe save it for a special occasion. I’m slightly scared to find out if it was just a fluke or if these guys are as cool as I think, but there’s only one way to find out, so let’s listen to their third release, A Way of Life.

Album cover courtesy of Chapter 22

A Way of Life was released in 1988 as the group’s third studio album. They had had an eight year hiatus from recording while the members of the band, visual artist Alan Vega and jazz musician Martin Rev, both pursued separate solo projects. Like their second album, it was produced by The Cars’ Ric Ocasek. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is, it’s so unique it can’t really be neatly categorised, but it’s pulsating synth punk with a bit of a darkness to it, paired with some Elvis-adjacent singing.

I love when someone makes it very clear through their art that they operate on a slightly different plane to most of us, and that really oozes out of their stuff – I don’t think there’s another band even remotely like this. Granted, this album is a bit more conventional than their first one, there seems to be a lot less shock value and vocal flair from Alan Vega than there was in that, but it’s still far from being a conventional album.

At their live shows, Suicide prodded and provoked audiences and often incited people into violence, with Vega saying that their most memorable gig was in my beautiful city of Glasgow where they were supporting the Clash and taunting the audience who hated them, telling them “You fuckers have to live through us to get to the main band”. An audience member responded by throwing an axe at Alan Vega’s head.

But it seems that that confrontation and strong reactions was something they were also aiming for– Vega says that he didn’t want audiences to come to see them to be entertained or have fun, and when the audiences started to enjoy them, he hated it: “I said to Marty, ‘I’m finished, where’s the confrontations? What are we gonna do now? People are dancing to this shit.” When they reunited, he also seemed to have mixed feelings about the lack of extreme reactions at their shows:

We’ve turned into fucking entertainers. It was never meant to turn out that way. But what can you do? People are completely unshockable now. Even if you brought a fresh corpse out on stage and started eating it with a fork, no one would bat an eyelid. Still, one of the things about playing live these days is that at least we know we’re not going to die on stage. That’s kinda nice, man.

Alan Vega said he wanted to use the shows to eradicate the barriers between the audience and the performers and said “[Suicide] were about recognizing how alive things were.” You can hear that on the albums, too. When I listened to their self-titled, it felt like the air around me was electric – I think partly because I didn’t know what I was listening to, but also because they’re doing something that feels forceful or powerful, like the pulsating and yelping is provoking you and trying to stir up a reaction like they did with their shows.

A Way of Life is significantly less confrontational than their debut, and I didn’t have the same reaction to it either. But it’s still a great album, less in your face and physical and more just an example of well-honed songcraft. No one was doing it like them, and no one still is, with the ’50s style singing combined with their weird pulsing industrial sound, with one lovely romantic song peppered in there for good measure. But what a song it is, “Surrender” sounds like something you’d hear at the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks, and long-time readers will know that that’s the fastest way to my heart.

I tried to explain these guys to someone a few days ago and played a few songs by them, but I found that it’s just not the sort of band where you can do that very easily. I think they’re best enjoyed with good headphones, laying down in a dark room. There’s just something very visceral about them when you really get into it, maybe to a lesser extent with this album, but remarkably so nonetheless. I’m giving it a 9/10, it’s great. I’m looking forward to listening to their second album, which apparently has so many disco influences that they tried to get Giorgio Moroder to produce it.