Each London Underground Tube line has its own personality, as well as its own color. Jubilee Line, despite its misleading name, is fittingly represented by the color grey. Its cars resemble converted livestock transports with wood- plank floors, burlap- textured seats, graffiti, and phallic passenger handles constructed from thick springs that dangle from the ceiling like funny- car gearshifts. Central Line, on the other hand, has ass- contoured seats upholstered in the crisp business power colors-- red, blue, and dark grey-- and sexy chrome rails to grip. Circle Line is bland and utilitarian. Every time I slid into a train late at night and collapsed on a warm seat I had the London Suede stuck in my head.

Suede's sounds should be piped into each car. No other UK band better embodies the drunken post- club commutes, the couple making out in the corner, the business suits and puke, the graphitti and adverts, the reliability and rattling, the funtionality and sexiness, the history and the technology, the bright platforms and dark tunnels.

Sci-Fi Lullabies, a retrospective b- side collection, beautifully captures Suede's frothy smooth blend of Blur's intricate pop guitar lines, Pulp's pornographic balladry, Manic Street Preachers' anthemic glam, and Oasis' pretention. For a double- length collection of odds and ends, Lullabies is surprisingly consistent in quality and texture. The glittered tunes are testament to Suede's divine luck of landing two of the best guitarist in recent English history-- first Bernard Butler and more recently boy- wonder Richard Oakes. Butler's revolutionary single note lines and uncanny grasp of melody carry several tunes. For example, the guitar playing and classic songs "Killing of a Flash Boy" and "My Insatiable One" are worth the price of admission alone and overshadow Suede's tendency to over- run the songs.

You get the feeling that the good people of Britain, whose stuffy suits and social etiquette probably give way to behind- closed- doors bondage and buggery and tabs of ecstacy between tea bisquits, aren't as reserved as they make out to be. Case in point? Sci-Fi Lullabies.

-Brent DiCrescenzo