How have they managed this? Not simply a great Suede record, but an electrifying, life-saving record which, with its tension and euphoria, intersects with contemporary disquiet like nothing else around.
It feels vital, required listening, one of those collections of songs that feels unnervingly timely, as all the best records do, as if it were somehow willed into existence by what used to be called the collective unconscious back when people had an interior life.
On Broken Music for Broken People we have a track for humans bursting apart in a tightening contemporary vice yet not giving up on finding a way to escape. As it powerfully suggests, one such route is coming together through music... “it’s broken music and it’s broken people, who will save the world...”
“There’s something inside craves the simulated life,” Brett Anderson intones on Dancing With The Europeans, with his new talking over songs thing, a trick which one of his touchstones (and their early champion) David Bowie used to employ, “We want to be strong and we want to below… the flesh might die, but our love will survive.”
That tension is between the seduction of the ease of modern life, a thoughtless dream of guided thoughts, opinions, leisure and expectations which contrives to empty you out and diminish the actual living present, and the bone-deep pull towards moments where you suddenly arrive back into your life, your body, and wake the hell up. Music is a means to this.
In fact, despite music becoming content along with everything else (not just arts but meals, love, illness, children), it has conversely also become one of the principal means towards giving people a dose of reality, in the form of a physical rush.
Live music is booming, audiences are going wild at shows, which have become an addiction for fans and for bands themselves (back to Oasis in a minute, but it’s amazing to see how their demeanours have shifted as their comeback tour has gone on, when they’re experiencing these waves of ecstasy every night on stage; Noel in particular has lost about 10 years in age), and small wonder. Where else can we get our rocks off? Live sport is the only other means, which also involves plenty of collective singing, shouting, hugging, but also some unhelpful despair and frustration, for the most part.
Anderson has called Antidepressants their ‘post-punk’ album, following their ‘punk’ record from 2022 Autofiction, which initially stirred up the idea that it was possible for Suede to not simply continue to please fans, but impact a broader music scene.
Well, this one takes that promise and holds it up like a flare. Yes it is quite post-punk in its sound, particularly on the staggering title track, where Richard Oakes chopping guitar and Mat Osman’s death disco bass weave like peak Siouxsie and the Banshees, while Anderson skips between drawling like a sober Mark E Smith and singing like an animated Robert Smith, in a song about the medication of the human condition.
Again the call for a return to life – and death. On opener Disintegrate, Anderson revels in mortality, the gradual falling apart of his body, relishing how all this “Disconnected/connected” existence will still be trumped by the raw truth of dying. This is not depressing, he treats this fact as glorious, and raises the hairs on the back of your neck as he triumphantly wails, “Come down and disintegrate with me, we’re cut down like the daises.”
Time and again, Suede manage to match such lyrical themes with music that makes you feel the ephemeral thrill of being alive. Somewhere Between an Atom and A Star – ie humans - soars as epically as anything they’ve ever done. Sweet Kid is a lovingly realist ode to Anderson’s teenage son (will make you weep if you have one of your own, like this writer). June Rain is a gorgeous piece of their classic urban fatalism, “I close my eyes and walk into the traffic flow,” coupled to an older perspective which suits them well: “I’m an alien on the opposite side of the road and you wave to me, despite the fact I’ve let myself go.”
Final track Life Is Endless, Life Is A Moment brings everything together, including Suede’s secret weapon: romance. Ah yes, that old unfashionable thing. But they were initially seen as the inheritors of The Smith’s crown because of the romance they found in English life. One fraught with darkness and despair and class rage and outsider frustration, but was nevertheless an romantic one, believing in love and art’s ability to see you through.
Again, though: how have they managed this? Such second winds for bands are rare indeed.
But it’s lovely timing. With Britpop very much back on the scene, after the Blur reunion, this year’s Oasis triumph, Pulp have actually combined a reunion tour with an excellent record, and there’s a hundred other bands from the era finding new audiences as both young and old seek the full-blooded rush of live shows.
While Suede were never part of the Britpop pack, they certainly helped kick off the era. Why? Well, simply because after American grunge bands dominated in the early Nineties, with the English music scene operating under an immovable hegemony of Phil Collins/Bryan Adams/Simply Red/Status Quo and all those unit-shifting MOR corporate dinosaurs, Suede kicked a hole in the side of it with raw music that came from council estates but sought glamour, sex, wildness and romanticism in a way that was truly, spectacularly exciting. Almost inconceivable today, in fact; there’s so much music available, you can find your own (lonely) path through it all. Back then, though, with choice so limited, Suede were the answer to the prayers of a disaffected generation. So much so, that a whole era began as multiple bands followed through the gap they had opened and took over the whole music industry.
So yes, it’s pleasing they are getting their moment, with a Southbank residency marking the respect they are held in.
But, it’s even more pleasing to see them grab the moment and come out with something so vital and real and downright accomplished.
How have they managed this? Well, they clearly believe again. Here’s hoping it catches…
Antidepressants is out now
