Suede
Antidepressants
BMG
Sep 05, 2025
Internet Unique
“It’s damaged music and it’s damaged folks that can save the world!” sings Brett Anderson on “Damaged Music for Damaged Individuals,” which opens the second half of Antidepressants. It’s Suede’s tenth lengthy participant and second of their trilogy of “black and white albums” after 2022’s Autofiction. Described earlier this 12 months by frontman Brett Anderson as Suede’s post-punk file, Antidepressants actually takes its cue from lots of that style’s related artists with a number of of the album’s 11 songs bearing musical hallmarks not that dissimilar to Public Picture Ltd, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Chameleons and The Sisters of Mercy amongst others.
Nonetheless, that is unmistakably Suede in really feel and construction. Anderson’s now acquainted tones work in tandem with the beautiful musicianship supplied by his 4 long run cohorts—Richard Oakes (guitar), Mat Osman (bass), Simon Gilbert (drums), and Neil Codling (keys/guitar). If its predecessor was the sound of Suede delving into their punk roots, Antidepressants is the band taking its subsequent logical step. Coarse and angular, uncooked, and incisive. From the second “Disintegrate” opens the album with its “disconnected; linked” chorus, Antidepressants is an intoxicating and considerably discordant journey that implies Suede are on a mission of self-discovery in model new territories.
Produced by long-term cohort Ed Buller who’s labored with the band on and off proper from their debut single (“The Drowners”) onwards, Antidepressants leaves no holds barred relating to delivering its assertion of intent. Every of its 11 items flows with an immediacy that seems like separate components of an identical narrative. Each one tells its personal story that’s much less sci-fi lullaby and extra allured by “miracles of glass and metal” (“The Sound and the Summer time”). Many followers will likely be accustomed to the sprechgesang laden title observe which was first performed finally 12 months’s Isle of Wight Competition and has turn out to be a staple of the band’s dwell units ever since. Whereas the equally punchy “Dancing With the Europeans” begins with a lilting riff (suppose first album Smiths and even The La’s as reference factors) earlier than constructing magnificently into probably the most anthemic items of labor of their admittedly close to flawless catalogue.
Having launched into two profitable sold-out excursions with Manic Avenue Preachers in 2023 and 2024, each “Candy Child” and “Someplace Between an Atom and a Star” doff their caps in direction of the Welsh trio in melody and construction. Which is maybe not that stunning given the long-standing mutual admiration and kinship between each bands. In the meantime, “Prison Methods” takes its cue from an unlikely supply in Spear of Future’s “Rainmaker,” albeit given a twenty first century sheen and makeover that couldn’t be anybody else however Suede.
As with each Suede file, Antidepressants accommodates two numbers that might be described as “ballads,” albeit in essentially the most gothic sense of the phrase. “Trance State” canters alongside gracefully, its bassline echoing New Order of their grandiose Energy, Corruption & Lies period whereas Anderson opines “I hope you’re going someplace good.” Higher nonetheless is the closing quantity “Life Is Limitless, Life Is a Second,” which takes on a black-clad presence all of its personal (suppose The Sisters of Mercy’s “Some Sort of Stranger” solely extra seductive).
Sandwiched between the 2 is the gorgeously epic “June Rain” which additionally has its foundations laid within the post-punk wastelands between ’79 and ’89 whereas nonetheless managing to sound as present and vibrant as anything launched this 12 months.
On stability, Antidepressants appears to be a file Suede have been aching to make for years, perhaps even many years. Nevertheless, with all of the turbulence and uncertainty that surrounds us proper now this seems like the right complement to appease the ache and anxieties of the actual world. (www.suede.co.uk)
Writer ranking: 9/10
Price this album
Common reader ranking: 7/10