Artist: Suede
Album: Antidepressants
Label: BMG Rights Management
Link: https://www.suede.co.uk/homepage/
Style: Pop/Rock, Pop
Between sparkling new bands and unexpected reunions, Britpop is definitely on a roll right now! And in the latter category, if there’s one band we weren’t expecting anything from in 2025, it was Suede! And yet, that hasn’t stopped them from releasing one of the best albums of the autumn. The band formed in the late 1980s and, even before releasing their first single, found themselves on the front page of Melody Maker. They followed this up with a debut album that reached number one in the UK charts, then a non-linear career with several years of inconsistency between success and separation.
In better shape than ever, Brett Anderson’s band is back with an album still inspired by the music of David Bowie and The Smiths. The musical foundations, a mix of finely crafted melodies and invigorating energy, which made Suede’s reputation both on stage and on record, are still there, but today there are a few more insistent touches from other styles such as New Wave and Goth, music that also influenced England. This stylistic openness is skillfully negotiated by the musicians, who combine their personalities with delightful efficiency.
The band’s characteristic sound texture, made up of stringy, clear guitars, which, as we said, evokes The Smiths, but with a little more rock, is still present and will delight long-time fans as well as new converts to shoegaze. On Antidepressants, Brett Anderson’s voice, although it has matured, retains its distinctive quality, the singer having adapted it to both energetic flights of fancy and more subtle tracks such as ‘Broken Music For Broken People’ and ‘Trance State’. Inevitably, with musicians of this calibre, the music is served up with impeccable production that leaves nothing to chance and allows you to enjoy it even on a very good sound system, especially if you can turn up the volume!