Suede: “I don’t think there’s any band of our generation still making records as vital as ours”

Suede have spoken to NME about their new album ‘Antidepressants’ – with frontman Brett Anderson declaring: “I don’t think there’s any other band of our generation that are still making records as vital as the records we’re making.”

Currently set to land at the Number One spot in the UK this week, the art-rock veterans’ 10th studio album sees them leaning on a “post-punk” energy after the raw punk edge of predecessor ‘Autofiction’ – continuing the band’s purple patch comeback streak of acclaimed and inspired records following their 2010 reunion.

Speaking to NME ahead of ‘Autofiction’ back in 2022, Anderson teased that Suede’s next LP would be “much more experimental”, adding: “I’d love to think that our most daring work is ahead of us.” Does he feel as if the band lived up to that on ‘Antidepressants’?

“I definitely go into making every record now with that spirit,” he replied. “I’m really proud of the kind of position we seem to have found ourselves in, in the musical landscape. I don’t think there’s any other band of our generation that are still making records as vital as the records we’re making.

“I don’t think there’s any other band that look at making records as something other than a souvenir for a tour or something like that. I feel that we’re still making exciting music, pushing our sound and not just stuck as a self-parody. I never wanted to be the kind of band that rests on their laurels.”

Looking back over their legacy as the inadvertent and reluctant pioneers of ‘Britpop’, Anderson continued: “I’m proud of the ‘90s stuff we did, but I don’t think about it all the time. What I think about is this record and the next one.”

While the world rides a wave of ’90s nostalgia due to Oasis‘ ongoing Live ’25 reunion tour and Pulp returning with a stellar tour and comeback record ‘More’, Anderson said that he wouldn’t be able to continue with Suede as an endeavour unless they were fully invested in the present and the future.

“We can talk about [the ’90s], but I’ve not got anything interesting left to say about it,” he admitted. “It doesn’t interest me that much. The last thing I ever wanted Suede to be was a nostalgia act. I’ve always felt like we’re out on our own. I felt like we were out on our own in ‘92, when no one wanted to sing about British life, and we were the only people doing it. I think we survived and now we’re out on our own.

“The zeitgeist shifts and moves around. Sometimes we resonate with that and sometimes we’re diametrically opposed to the zeitgeist, but we just carry on doing our own thing.”

Facing the zeitgeist of 2025, Suede’s ‘Antidepressants’ offers a “broader societal record” that’s still personal, but looks for “connection in a disconnected world” with music and togetherness ultimately proving the best way to beat global malaise and depression.

“The tone of the 21st century is something that I’ve tried to reflect: the neurosis, the sense of suppression, the sense of latent control that I feel,” said Anderson. “There are a lot of incidental sound effects and things like that. It seems to me that a citizen of the 21st century has always been issued commands. Lots of those little snippets are supposed to be that sense of chatter that’s always going on.

“That might sound like the record is dark. There is a darkness, but there is also a joy to escaping that which I wanted to express as well. Lots of the songs are about escaping that suppression, and the joy there is to be had there. Something like ‘The Sound Of The Summer’ or ‘Dancing With The Europeans’, it’s that whole thing of finding connection in a disconnected world.

“There’s all this wonder to be had in life. Sometimes that’s hard to find, but I’m determined to find it.”

With a widescreen sense of euphoria to cut through the fog of modern life, ‘Antidepressants’ excited fans when Anderson described it as their “post-punk album” early doors.

“I’ve learned over the years that you have to be quite simplistic when you’re describing your records, especially when you’re describing them for the first time,” he told NME. “Those descriptions get used over and over again. There’s no room for subtlety and nuance within the media, it just gets squashed. You have to refer to genres in a broad sense.

“Obviously anyone who’s ever really listened to my descriptions of the records know that I’m not saying that ‘Autofiction’ was ‘a punk record’, it was ‘our punk record’. It’s Suede through a punk lens. It’s the same with this – it’s not a post-punk pastiche, but those things have crept in.”

Anderson explained that those elements were largely provided by guitarist Richard Oakes contributing more – revealing his true self and teenage obsessions that he didn’t previously feel as free to do so, when he joined the band as a 17-year-old to replace the departed Bernard Butler in 1994.

“Richard has become such an incredible and important part of Suede in the ’20s,” the frontman explained. “His influences are very post-punk. He’s always been into PiL, Siouxsie And The Banshees and all these things.

“You’re seeing Suede becoming more of a post-punk band rather than a ‘70s rock band, which we possibly could be. To oversimplistically describe it, we were that in the ‘90s. Mainly it’s because Richard is finally expressing himself as a musician, and it’s a really wonderful thing to see. It’s very exciting.”

The frontman agreed that it was a much more freeing source to draw from, given that post-punk arguably has fewer rules and constraints than punk. “You could point to archetypal post-punk bands, but it’s such a broad sound,” he said. “The punk sound was much more narrow. Lots of post-punk is artier and more avant-garde, from PiL to Siouxsie to Joy Division and New Order.

“PiL was [John] Lydon becoming more in control of the overall sound. The Pistols were a marriage of more traditional rock with his arty-er sensibilities. That’s what made them amazing: the two things that married together really beautifully. It’s difficult to fit it into a neater category. Post-punk is wider and more accepting of different influences; more of a marriage of different things and cross-pollination.”

Admitting that it’s a defiant spirit to never be tied to a single genre, scene or movement that has driven Suede through the decades, Anderson said that their working-class underdog spirit still remains from their days of obscurity.

“In the early ‘90s when we were banging our heads against the wall because no one was interested and we were playing to two people in a pub, on a diet of tea, crisps and salad pittas, it was a bleak time,” he said, recalling how all of the members of Suede had at one point had a job cleaning toilets. “There certainly wasn’t that cultural buoyancy of the late ‘90s. ‘Cool Britannia’ was a long way away in 1992.

“When we were singing about British life in 1991-92 when no one else was doing it, it was a very different world. We do our own thing, people sometimes get it, sometimes they don’t. What we did in the early ‘90s happened to set the tone for that decade, for better or worse.”

Asked if he feels that a band Suede would make it if they emerged in 2025, the frontman replied: “If it means being passionate about music and loving it for the right reasons, then yes, of course. There’s a purpose to the years of failure. There are no shortcuts in life, and there are no shortcuts in a career. There’s a point to it because you’re basically learning your craft.

“You’ve got to have years of rejection and years of failure, because it’s necessary to learn. I’m always telling my kid that there’s no such thing as failure: there’s only success and learning.”

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“Fucking up” and a sense of jeopardy remains at the core of the Suede live experience too, Anderson told us – looking ahead to unpredictable nights and shaking up the setlists on their upcoming tour.

“It’s like John Peel’s description of The Fall: ‘Always different, always the same’. It’s a brilliant description, and it’s the same with Suede in a way. I like to keep people guessing and you know that I’m not going to have Paula Abdul or choreography on stage. It’s not my thing, but there will be something fresh about it and it will be fantastic.

“I think we’re one of the most exciting live bands around, I really do. I want to maintain that reputation.”

Another band who felt the impact of Suede as a live force were Manic Street Preachers, with frontman James Dean Bradfield once telling us that Anderson and co inspired them to “up their game” when they embarked on a series of joint tours of the UK, US and Europe.

“The Manics are lovely boys and I’m very, very fond of them,” Anderson told us of the co-headline shows. “They’re a fantastic band and it was a wonderful tour. There’s something very complimentary about the bands and their fans. We tessellate quite beautifully, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like some kind of nostalgic ‘90s Britpop party. We occupy similar territory, but different enough to be complimentary.

“They’re amazing boys and I love so many of their songs. I’d sit on the side of the stage night after night and watch ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ and ‘Design For Life’. I’ve only good things to say about them.”

Suede’s next big live spectacle comes with their takeover of London’s Southbank Centre – with highlights set to be the band’s “off-mic” show and their first fully-orchestrated gig.

“We thought we had enough range in our work to do different things,” said Anderson. “We could do straight-up rock gigs, but we’re also doing something at Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Paraorchestra who I’ve worked with before and are absolutely amazing.

“That’ll be a more orchestrated version of Suede ballads from our back catalogue and a couple of things from our new album.

“Then we’re doing this thing at the Purcell Rooms which we’ve never done before. It’s not unplugged, it’s off-mic. Unplugged carries baggage of the whole ‘MTV Unplugged’ thing. Also that whole thing was a bit of a cheat because it wasn’t unplugged, it was just plugged in acoustic instruments.

“What I do live sometimes if I feel like the venue is intimate enough – you can’t do it at really big places or festivals – I do an acoustic song completely off-mic. That can be a really exciting moment, because you’re going from really fucking loud to quite quiet. If people are respectful enough, it can be really magical.”

Fans should expect a Suede gig like no other at the Purcell Rooms, with Anderson likening it to “a teenage band jamming in a bedroom”.

“Me and Mat [Osman, bassist] used to be in this band many years ago in the ‘80s, in fact one of the first bands we were in together – and we were in a few,” he recalled. “We used to have this thing called ‘Bedroom Rock’. It’s not like we were a proper band, we were just a couple of kids banging around on crappy guitars with bad songs.

“We used to invite a couple of mates into my bedroom in my dad’s little council house in Linfield and sit there playing our crappy songs in the room. There’s something quite intimate about it, and I suppose this is a little homage to that.

After that and a 2026 winter tour, Suede look set to remain busy with Anderson admitting that he’s “always excited about the next record” and has been thinking about album Number 11.

“I was speaking to Richard the other day about things we might bring in,” he said. “There’s always the next record to look forward to, and that’s a great position to be in: when you’ve got people listening and you feel as if people care. It’s easy to care yourself, but if no one else does then it’s quite hard!”

“It’s always got to be something that’s within the Suede universe. I don’t quite know where we’re going to go yet, but I know it’s going to be great.”

‘Antidepressants’ by Suede is out now. See their 2026 UK tour dates below and visit here for tickets and more information.

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