SUEDE have just made their best album in decades – just ask their biggest fan, BRETT ANDERSON. Along with the rest of the band, he explains to Uncut how fatherhood, family and “plummeting towards old age” have helped bring fresh perspectives while simultaneously honouring their earliest influences. “We’ve got to find ways to be uncomfortable,” Brett tells Tom Pinnock, in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops now and available to buy from our online store.
Brett Anderson is dressed in the classic Suede uniform when he opens the door: tucked-in shirt, smart trousers and, indeed, socks, all in various shades of black. “I’ve spent a lot of time here,” he says of his west London base, where he stays when he’s not with his family in rural Somerset. “But I’ve not done much to it.” He implores Uncut not to judge him on the dated kitchen, then turns to the lounge area. “The radiators, I chose them, and the chandelier and sofas, so write what you like about those…”
Like its owner, this city bolthole – comprising one floor of a grand, pillared townhouse – is stylish, bohemian and arty, with a touch of weathered glamour. Green leaves and a jetplane sky fill the windows, there’s a moka pot heating on the stove, dark family photos on the mantelpiece and a black vintage guitar propped up against the fireplace. Suede bassist Mat Osman, also in black, is similarly arranged on a kitchen stool.
We’re here to discuss Autofiction, Suede’s ninth album. A raw blast of post-punk noise and stripped-back energy, it is a far cry from the more theatrical, experimental soundscapes of 2018’s The Blue Hour. It’s the group’s most exciting record in decades.
“It’s just the way the pendulum swings,” says Anderson. “After making two quite conceptual, avant-garde records, you naturally want to explore that nastier side. Whenever I do accidentally hear one of our records on the radio, I’m always a bit disappointed and I think ‘God, I wish we recorded that with a bit more fucking balls.’ So this is our attempt to redress that with a really live-sounding record. It’s not theoretical, more a feel record.”
The concept of a ‘Suede do punk’ album was first mooted in producer Ed Buller’s kitchen after the band performed at the Roundhouse in 2016. But Anderson and the band weren’t quite ready to take that path back then.
“I said, ‘You should do a punk album,’” recalls Buller. “I think it was too early then. We’ve always talked about doing it, but we’ve never really had the balls to. But Autofiction is the idea of ‘what would Suede sound like if they were to come out in 1979?’ To be honest, what’s really behind this record is the authenticity of the sound of the band. Not gadgetry, but what they sound like when they play together. At the moment, Autofiction is probably my favourite Suede record.”
In these 11 songs, Anderson addresses the past, the future, fatherhood and family, gazing into the darker side of life with his usual flamboyant turn of phrase: “Our lives too will pass and fade like this moment”, goes “Personality Disorder”. “Our clothes are like an anthem for sorrow…”
“I didn’t want to write an album pretending to be a young man,” he explains, “pretending that I have the same challenges as a 20-year-old. I wanted it to be a snapshot of myself in my fifties, and the darkness you sometimes find in that, as you’re plummeting towards old age. I find that terrifying in lots of ways.”
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