Suede are in the midst of an impressive, productive second act, and their latest goth-infused Antidepressants is a testament to that. Since 2013, three years after their live reunion, Suede have released five studio albums, equaling the total number of records during their first act (ignoring their lustrous B-sides, taking a lesson or two from the Smiths). Certainly, their latest five records are more consistent than their first five.
In their early days, Suede imbued a besmirched glamour with an effete posturing, that is to say, the lithe and tall Brett Anderson, frontman and lyricist of Suede, sang like David Bowie, dressed like Morrissey, and shook his meat (sorry, hips!) to the beat like Mick Jagger. They were brilliantly brash and full of braggadocio—provocative. They exuded a 1970s sullied glam rock beauty. Style over substance, though, they were not.
They created a sonic world dubbed as “Suedeworld”, an urban demimonde of narcotics and dissolution, wherein sex and poverty and violence blurred into a series of highly-stylized and kitchen sink vignettes. At the heart of this fictional world was an otherness, an alienation that characters couldn’t assuage, let alone escape. Thirty-odd years later, a feeling of disconnect—though a different kind—continues to persist. Antidepressants, Suede’s tenth studio album, is a cri de coeur for connection in an ever-increasing technological world that, paradoxically, is becoming more disconnected.
After taking their sonic experimentations as far as they could with the orchestral-laden The Blue Hour (2018), the last installment of a loose trilogy that began with Bloodsports in 2013, Suede made a U-turn with Autofiction (2022), adopting a back-to-basics approach that was, in many ways, nakedly so. “If Autofiction was our punk record, Antidepressants is our post-punk record,” Anderson said. Following on from Autofiction, Antidepressants is intended to be the second in a trilogy of “black and white” albums—in other words, their second triad since their reunion.
Where does Antidepressants sit in Suede’s canon? Whereas Autofiction is a chiaroscuro world of introspection, Antidepressants is the equivalent of tenebrism—dramatic, intense, and dark. Put differently, Antidepressants looks outwardly, proving to be more expansive than its predecessor, with a gothic grandeur that is part Dog Man Star, part Seventeen Seconds.
That being said, Antidepressants is also replete with post-punk touchstones, such as Wire, Gang of Four, and Magazine, bolstered by its capacious production—longtime collaborator Ed Buller is at the production helm—in which the instrumentation—lacerating electric guitars, throbbing basslines, and punchy tom-toms—have space to stand out individually.
Despite Antidepressants being less of an autobiographical record than Autofiction, there is a greater amount of rage. In fact, it is like the half-crazed sibling who, bellicose and brutish, seeks exaltation in annihilation and joy in pain. Furthermore, Anderson has always been primal and feral, an indignation burns beneath his debonair, cool veneer. Like the Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon (whose 1962 Vogue shoot inspired the album cover), Anderson, through his songs, exposes our bestial, carnal instincts. Indeed, we are the pigs.
The opener, “Disintegrate” (surely a conspiratorial wink to the Cure?), begins with an automated voice uttering “connected, disconnected”, backed by a colossal wall of sound, before erupting with Simon Gilbert’s thumping bass-drum and Mat Osman’s truculent, post-punk bass. Lyrically, it is a clarion call to seize the day. On Antidepressants, Suede turn the memento mori into a carpe diem. Yes, Suede are middle-aged—but they are refusing to lament, stagnate, or be nostalgic.
Like Autofiction, there is an immediacy to Antidepressants, but to a greater extent, including those inimitable Suede-y anthemic choruses. Moreover, some tracks seem to have been an outgrowth of touring Autofiction and written with a live audience in mind, such as “Dancing with the Europeans”, an anthem about the communal power of live concerts, complete with a reference to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ poem, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”.
The title track, “Antidepressants”, is a metaphor for music being a form of succour. One of the highlights is Anderson’s speak-singing, punctuated by his trademark yelp, which finds him emulating the churlish John Lydon, underpinned by Richard Oakes’ post-punk-inflected guitar.
Listening to Antidepressants, it is clear what type of record Suede wanted to create: a post-punk album that echoes the psychological effects of modern society—and they deliver. Not only do Suede achieve this via the lyrics (that are often fragmented) and the diegetic sound (we will get to that later), but also through the instrumentation, which can feel like a punch in the face, working both as a metaphor for how society can make one feel crushed and a wakeup call not to be docile.
Ever audacious, Suede double down on the theme of alienation in the 21st century by sparsely incorporating background mechanized voices, which, in the wrong hands, could come across gimmicky (it never does). In the coda of “The Sound and the Summer”, the distorted warnings by the British Transport Police and Network Rail—”See something that doesn’t look right?”—can be heard.
The title of the album—Antidepressants—is an indication of how Suede undertakes reflecting modern society. However, occasionally, this comes at the expense of subtlety, when Anderson makes references to medication and social media to foreground the record’s themes, which ends up sounding contrived and, as a result, negates any emotional heft of these signifiers.
Suede are at their best when dealing with dark drama, as heard in “The Sound and the Summer”, a joyride that flirts with death, and the Celtic-lilt “Criminal Ways”, a foot-stomping tune with sensual and violent imagery, “With the fear of your blade against my body”. Conversely, the oneiric “Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star” mirrors “Sometimes I Feel I’ll Float Away”, from Bloodsports, as well as connecting to the last track on Antidepressants, “Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment”.
Arguably, the apogee of Antidepressants comes from the final two songs: “June Rain”, an emotional and spectral ballad grappling with the transience of life, and the nebulous, Cure-esque “Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment”, which expresses the paradoxical nature of existence: how life can feel eternal and fleeting; how we can simultaneously feel young and old. It ends with a dramatic fade-out: “life”, the last word Anderson utters, floats in a diaphanous atmosphere, drifting away from us, like our own existence; the most powerful ending to an album that you are going to hear this year—if not this decade.
The album showcases a band maturing gracefully and at the top of their game, unafraid of taking risks. Suede are not content to rest on their laurels; they have a fire in their belly, as if this is their first record and they have everything to prove. With Antidepressants, the louche band of British rock have invigorated us with their crude élan.
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