Some bands burn brightly and then disappear leaving a corpse in various states of repair. Some even return, with varying degrees of success. In the case of Suede, who arguably struggled through Head Music and A New Morning to a somewhat ignominious end in 2003, a return felt inevitable (hell, Brett promised as much when the band departed the stage at the London Astoria), but no one could have predicted just how glorious that return would be.
Since reforming in 2010, Suede have released five albums – as many in the first chapter of their career – and they have all been stellar. Fans may argue about which has been the band’s reunion peak (although a good number would point to the stunning Autofiction), but the consensus has been that Suede’s comeback has been one of the great success stories, with the band maturing right alongside their fans, delivering a wealth of timeless tunes along the way.
Formats:
As has become increasingly common, Antidepressants comes in a range of formats, including cassette tape, vinyl, picture disc vinyl, CD, deluxe CD, and a boxset (exclusive to the band’s store) that gathers together both CD and vinyl, alongside a patch, fanzine, and tote bag. Additionally, you can build your own bundle, adding in t-shirts or other formats at a discount.
This review covers the deluxe edition CD, which comes in a clamshell box with three bonus tracks, a poster, and a sticker. Available at a sensible price, the sticker and poster are fine, but the main draw to this edition are the bonus tracks, which add another twelve-minutes or so to an otherwise svelte album.
The Album
It has been a relatively short gap since Autofiction – just three years – and it’s clear that the band’s still-accelerating trajectory has had a profound impact on their energy levels. Like its predecessor, Antidepressants finds the band hitting hard and fast, this deluxe edition deploying 14 tracks over the course of fifty-or-so-minutes. Rather more reliant on a post-punk sound than the full-on punk of its predecessor, it opens with the stunning Disintegrate, which takes a thundering great beat, growling bassline, and huge swathes of synth, all of which pave the way for one of the band’s great reunion-era choruses. It’s a hell of a way to start the album, highlighting both the unquenchable fire within the band and the excellent work behind the mixing desk of Andrew Scheps and Caesar Edmunds.
Next up, Dancing With The Europeans is a gleaming pop-rocker that sits somewhere between Dog Man Star and Coming Up in terms of sonics. With vibrant synths and an airy, anthemic chorus, it seems that touring with the Manic Street Preachers rubbed off, and this, alongside the opening track, sets an incredibly high bar for the album. Things take a darker turn on the title track, which combines semi-spoken word vocals with a majestic chorus, the band adopting the minor key atmosphere of The Cure’s A Forest along the way. In contrast, the spirit of Coming Up looms large over Sweet Kid which, with its massive drums and hook-laden chorus, will stick with you long after the album has spun to a close. Who wouldn’t throw their hands in the air for such a song, and it highlights Suede’s rare ability to make catharsis feel like a celebration.
Heading back to the darker pastures identified on the title track, the gritty guitars of The Sound And The Summer Somewhere whip up quite a storm as the band dig into the same punk-infused soundscapes found on Autofiction. It’s followed by the lovely Between An Atom And A Star – a dreamy, Bowie-esque epic that just seems to drift lazily out towards some unseen horizon in a manner reminiscent of Saturday Night.
Not merely this album’s underlying premise, but Suede’s entire ethos, Broken Music For Broken People finds Brett reminding his audience that there’s strength in unity, declaring that “it’s broken people who will save the world.” At a point when division seems to be the default setting for so many, it’s a cry from the heart that needs to be made, and it offers a glimmer of hope in an otherwise troubling time. It’s all washed away in short order by the lively post-punk track Criminal Ways, the guitars building to a crescendo that stands as one of the band’s heaviest tracks in years.
Held in place by the pounding toms of Simon Gilbert, Trance State is driven by a bassline ripped straight from the Simon Gallup play book, the result a hypnotic track that somehow still manages to pack in an addictive chorus. The pace slows with the eerie, semi-spoken word piece that is June Rain. When the melody does emerge, it feels both subdued and deeply intimate, although it builds to something rather more explosive as it progresses. The album proper wraps up with the soaring Life Is Endless Life Is A Moment. Not merely a great tune, it also stands alongside The Blue Hours’ As One, in terms of Brett’s stunning vocal delivery. An mesmerising finale that just builds and builds, it finally collapses in on itself, the guitars dragging the vocal back into the void.
Bonus Tracks
The deluxe edition of the album also features three bonus tracks. The first of these is the ferocious glam-punk rocker Dirty Looks, which finds Brett strutting his stuff, throwing in falsetto yips before leading the band into a glowering chorus powered by supercharged guitars. The post-punk sound of the album reasserts itself onSharpening Knives, which is a decent song, albeit a touch to close to Criminal Ways to be included in the main track listing. It leaves Overload to bring the deluxe edition to an end, and it says much of the quality of the album that such a song was relegated to the status of a bonus track. Driven by pounding drums and possessed of a chorus of the gods, for any other band it would be a lead single, and it effortlessly makes this deluxe edition an essential purchase for fans.
Conclusion
Suede’s renaissance has been a joy to behold. Older, wiser and, in many ways, better than ever, Suede have somehow rechannelled the youthful energy of their original sound, evolving it to effectively document the ongoing lives and experiences of their fans. With the band having reached such a peak in terms of songwriting, it’s impossible to say with any certainty whether Antidepressants is better than Autofiction. It is, however, easily its equal and there is no doubt that it will come to be seen as yet another classic in the band’s amazing catalogue of albums. 10/10
