Suede release latest album Antidepressants this week.
I know Suede have been sporadically releasing music over the past 20 years, but there’s something that hits just a little differently about a Suede album in the same year Oasis are touring and a new Pulp album also dropped. My 9-year-old self is having a ball!!
While I could take or leave some of their other more recent albums, this one really hit the brief. It’s managed to not drift too far from that familiar Suede sound, but also feels fresh, fitting in well with today’s music landscape.
Sweet Kid is a perfect example of this. It hones in on Brett Anderson’s unique vocals, with a musical backdrop that feels distinctly more 2020’s shoegaze/indie pop than 90’s psychedelic Brit pop. And this is important. Retaining what makes your band magical whilst not revelling too deeply in nostalgia is a challenging balance to achieve.
Lyrically, the album is both poignant and timely—a raw exploration of mental health struggles set against the backdrop of life in 2025, touching on themes including late stage capitalism and the enmeshing of technology into every facet of our lives. Broken Music for Broken People touches on the struggles of being a musician and the divergence between the artistic desire to create something meaningful and the industry’s desire to capitalise on their talent at any cost. Whereas tracks such as Trance State and Antidepressants lean more heavily into ideas about the cycle of mental illness, seeking out a cure, and the limitations of both these states of being.
Antidepressants is a heavy album, that’s for sure, but it’s what Suede are known for and it’s what makes the album work so magnificently. You feel as if you’ve stepped into a world of depression and at times desperation from start to finish. The storytelling is wonderful, the mood of the album is conveyed perfectly; Even the opening lyrics “connected, disconnected” encapsulate what to expect as you listen. It’s one to visit as a whole, or not at all, a callback to when we physically purchased albums and consumed them in their entirety.