last album. However, in friendly discussions with Anderson, Buller found that his ideas about a possible new Suede direction tallied almost exactly with the band's own: to write less complex, more immediate songs; to use heavier drum sounds, play fewer guitar solos and only employ string sections on a couple of songs such as "She" and "The Chemistry Between Us." The album was recorded between December 1995 and June 1996 at various locations. To prepare for its recording, the band had immersed themselves in T. Rex's 1972 album The Slider and its successor, Tanx; as Buller stated that his aspiration was to make "The Slider for the Nineties." T. Rex became the blueprint of the recording process, as the band spent a month at The Town House just working on drums. Buller explained how the recording process worked: "Basically, what we did, is that every track started with acoustic guitar, bongos, tambourine and Brett [Anderson], so it all started life pretty much the same way that Marc Bolan recorded all of his stuff originally." Bass player Mat Osman recalls how Buller was keen on making the album simple. "He was really keen on using all those devices: the big repeated end, the handclaps, the straightforward chorus, make it big and obvious." In an interview on the eve of the album's release, Anderson stated: "I wanted it to be a complete turnover from the last album, which was very dark and dank ... I wanted it to be communicative and understandable." Two songs which made it onto Coming Up had already been written in the early days of Suede. "Lazy" and "By the Sea" were two of Anderson's own compositions. "By the Sea" was actually written when Suede were recording their first album, which is why the song's opening line is similar to "So Young". Unlike the tense and chaotic recording of Dog Man Star, which according to Anderson was mostly written "by post", in a shift-like format, the new material was far more celebratory in both its development and execution. As opposed to the previous album which followed a stringent pattern of Butler composing music for Anderson's lyrics, Coming Up was a more collaborative project. Anderson stated: "Coming Up was more of a meritocracy – if something was good enough, it didn't matter what the source was." Songs such as "By the Sea" and "She" required the use of keyboards.