Before making Night Thoughts, the film that accompanies Suede’s latest album of the same name, lead singer, Brett Anderson was certain about one thing. “I wanted to avoid making a dozen rock promos,” he says, recalling “all the money we wasted making crappy videos in the past, and the chasm of quality between them and the songs we had written”.
Anderson was speaking at a Guardian Live Q&A, which took place following a preview screening of the film. Rather than shoot another rockumentary, he said the band chose to produce a film based loosely on the themes of family, fear and darkness that run through the album, giving full creative reign to its director, rock photographer Roger Sargent, best known for his work with The Libertines.
Sargent, who was also present, told the audience he connected with the album’s themes of family and fear very deeply and in a way that inspired some powerful visual ideas.
“Listening to it hit home with me,” he said. “It was writing from the heart and it resonated with what I was going through having lost my mother. Although the film is non-linear, there is a kind of story. It also echoes my childhood, places I went to as a kid with my parents.”
Night Thoughts begins with a man walking down a sandy beach towards the sea before entering the water fully clothed and beginning to drown himself. As he sinks in the water, events that suggest the background to his suicide begin to play out – a couple arguing, a marriage proposal, the suicide attempt of a grandparent, fights, the loss of a child – all soundtracked by the 12 songs from the album. It is dark, disturbing stuff that complements some of the most compelling and rounded music the band have ever made.
Anderson described his need to write about parenthood in the wake of the birth of his first child a few years ago.
“I wanted to write about it but non-sentimentally, in a way that fitted with the Suede universe. I couldn’t become a parent and write a concept album about farming. I had to tackle it and it was a wrestle to put your life on paper because there are things you don’t want to discuss. It was a huge struggle.”
He went on to talk about the journey the band had made since reforming in 2010 and the release of the first album of new material, 2013’s Bloodsports.
“When we got back together it was important we didn’t end up just playing the festival circuit. Anyone can turn up and play the old songs but we wanted to move forward and make new material that stretched us creatively. Making Bloodsports and the reception it received suggested we had a future, that people were still listening.”
Mat Osman, Suede’s bassist, agreed: “It’s gratifying to know that people still care. The warmth of the reception since we got back together has been genuinely heartening. You realise how precious it all is and it has encouraged us to be braver. I’m really proud of this record, I think the last three tracks, the end sequence, are as good as anything we’ve ever done.”
Anderson also recalled his own difficult teenage years and the sensations of detachment between parents and children described in the song on Night Thoughts, I Don’t Know How To Reach You, recalling the chasm in his relationship with his classical music loving father, detailing one hilarious anecdote: “He adored classical music so much that in the summer he would get in his Morris Traveller and drive to Hungary to the birthplace of Franz Liszt. And when he was called up for jury service he refused to swear on the Bible and chose to swear on a biography of Liszt instead.”
Reforming, he said, has given the band an opportunity to correct the mistakes of youth and while the music they are making now may no longer revel in the heated tangle of suburban teenage trauma, it has a weight and a resonance that was once not evident.
Today, Suede remain bold and original, not least in the creation of this 50-minute film that accompanies an album deliberately intended to push them out of their comfort-zone.
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Brett Anderson, Mat Osman and Roger Sargent were in conversation with Guardian music editor Michael Hann at a Guardian Live event at the Barbican on 20 January. To find out what other events are coming up, sign up to become a Guardian Member.
