Brett Anderson on Suede’s new album and the ‘volatility’ of modern life

“Being a citizen of the 21st century, it feels increasingly like the world is teetering on the edge of something,” says Brett Anderson. We’re in his west London flat, drinking tea and contemplating the unnerving, ambient feeling of anxiety that seems to define modern life. “It’s like a pressure cooker effect,” the Suede frontman tells me. “I don’t quite know what’s going to happen, but it’s volatile.”

The fractious, insidious hum of perpetual noise we’re all continually exposed to these days – alarms, alerts, notifications, reels, snippets of conversation, messages, adverts; endless fragments of disconnected information – permeates the band’s new album, Antidepressants. “I’ve tried to bring this sonic ephemera into the record,” Anderson says. “Headphones in, headphones out; connection, disconnection. I wanted to reflect this sense of fracturedness, but I also wanted the album to have a joyous, defiant quality too, not to just embrace the depression in a nihilistic way. I wanted to say, ‘Fuck you,’ and have a human response to the chatter and fragmentation we’re increasingly exposed to.” 

“So there’s a sense of optimism there?” I venture.

“Veiled optimism,” he laughs. “Not explicit optimism.”

From Disintegrate to the subsequent singles, Trance State and Dancing with the Europeans, Antidepressants is an intense, raw record responding with urgency to the neuroses and anxieties of modern life. “I tried to take an impression of 21st-century angst; to reflect some of that in an impressionistic way,” he explains. “But the point of a songwriter isn’t necessarily to have the answers. It’s not journalism, it’s a much blunter instrument. You’re just pointing at things and hinting at things, throwing paint at the wall and making this general impression of how you see life. And it’s a fascinating process because you don't have the freedom of prose, but you can find four stupid words with four stupid notes, and it can be the most beautiful thing in the world, in the same way that you’d have to write a whole book to feel that way. Not to say that songwriting is better than writing or art – they’re just different things – but the incredible efficiency pop music can have if it’s done right is such a powerful thing.”

Being a citizen of the 21st century, it feels increasingly like the world is teetering on the edge of something. It’s like a pressure cooker effect. I don’t quite know what’s going to happen, but it’s volatile – Brett Anderson

Ever since they emerged on the music scene in 1992 with their debut single, The Drowners – posing an irresistibly androgynous, glamorous and sexually-charged alternative to the earnestness of American grunge or the tedious introspection of shoegazing – Anderson’s focus as a songwriter has continually remained anchored in his present moment, finding material in his immediate environment. As a band, they’ve always attempted to distance themselves from the Britpop movement they’re long-credited with having unintentionally initiated. Their songs have drawn on the realities of working-class ennui, drug use and kitchen sink drama, yet while they may have scavenged for romance in the terraces and cul-de-sacs of small-town life, they don’t romanticise them. Instead, there’s some other quality of realism – a sense of something viscous and feral – they aren’t afraid to invoke or look away from.

“Some people picked up on the wrong element of [our early albums],” Anderson reflects. “We happened to be writing about Britain because it was our immediate environment. If we’d been Japanese, we'd have been writing about Japan. It’s just a reflection of the real life that we saw around us. But we were documenting Britain, we weren't celebrating it, and that’s the big difference.”

As the 30-year culture cycle continues to turn with grinding inevitability, reanimating long-dormant bands from the 1990s, Suede, unlike most of their contemporaries (most notably Oasis, respectfully), are not willing to just go through the motions. “We have that energy and appetite to evolve,” Anderson says. “Lots of bands of our generation are stuck in the 90s in one way or another, either repeating themselves artistically or just playing the same songs. I've never wanted to do that, I've never wanted to be part of that nostalgia thing.”

If anything, Antidepressants is an antidote to nostalgia, galvanised by a feeling of forward motion and anticipation. “It’s a kind of memento mori, a reminder of death,” Anderson explains. I recall the words of novelist Muriel Spark, who said, “If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life… Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.” Not that I’m necessarily quite ready to take her advice, but is Muriel right? Would we be happier if we came to terms with the inevitability of our own demise? It’s tempting to try and ignore it.

Lots of bands of our generation are stuck in the 90s in one way or another... I've never wanted to be part of that nostalgia thing – Brett Anderson

“That’s the point, isn’t it? You kind of accept your mortality and you live for the moment, and you cram so much more into life, because you know it’s not forever. If you think that you’re drifting off to some wonderful afterlife that’s going to be better than now, then life is just reduced to the status of a waiting room,” he responds, and I’m reminded of Life is Short, Life is Endless, the stirring final track of their new album. “It’s not an original thought, but let’s just say that we’re going to die, and that’s that, but try and make the most of our most of our time on time on Earth. There’s a bleakness to that, but it’s actually also about embracing life – carpe diem. There’s beauty in transience.”

The sense of living in denial, insulated from reality by the analgesic effect of doom scrolling and the deluge of constant chatter, brings us back to a central theme of Antidepressants. “It’s all part of the culture of being numbed,” he says.. “We’re terrified of death, we’re terrified of pain, we’re terrified of discomfort. If we experience unhappiness, we go to the doctor and they give us a pill, rather than embracing it as a part of the human condition. We want to live in this permanent, numbed, online state where we’re not really feeling anything, we’re just sort of plugged in. And I think there’s a terrifying dystopia around the corner if we’re not careful.”

Following their “punk” album Autofiction in 2022, Antidepressants is their “post-punk” record. Anderson sees it as the second in a triptych of hard-edged, rawer-sounding rock albums defined by a trio of striking black and white covers. The new album’s artwork takes its inspiration from an arresting portrait of Francis Bacon shot by John Deacon for Vogue in 1952, in which the artist is stripped to the waist and holding aloft a split carcass of meat. Suede’s sleeve reimagines this set-up, with Anderson semi-concealed in shadows and flanked by the splayed ribs of a butchered animal, which, at first glance, could almost be wings. Their cover is starker yet more carnal than Deacon’s original somehow, more graphic.

“I wanted artwork that’s iconic and monochromatic; something that can be easily disseminated. I love logos and insignia, like the Che Guevara image or the Motorhead logo, which is fucking brilliant, it’s so powerful,” Anderson tells me. “In the 90s, we wanted subtlety and shades of meaning. Our album Dog Man Star (1994), the cover is beautiful and I love it, it’s nuanced. These days, I want nuance in songwriting, but I kind of like simpler sleeves. Maybe the next one will be the simplest.” He’s already thinking about the next album, albeit “embryonically”.

As the afternoon wears on, we’ve covered a lot of ground – our respective deaths, the current hellscape, a possible future dystopia, and so much more. Tea has been drunk, the shadows have lengthened, and it’s time to say farewell – Anderson is heading to a nearby rehearsal space where the band are preparing for their upcoming takeover of the Southbank Centre. I meanwhile wander to the nearby Ole & Steen to eat a cinnamon bun and attempt to begin the practice of reconciling myself to the transient nature of existence.

Antidepressants is available to order here now.