Picture the scene.
You're going out to dinner. You've booked a babysitter. Spruced up in the shower. Applied (insert body spray and/or aftershave of choice here). You and your date look the part. You head to that nice restaurant in town that you've not been to for a while, but always did incredible food. Blew you away. You recommended it and went there with friends, many times. You're looking forward to it, as you'd expect. You go inside. It's much the same as you remember, the decor giving a comfortable sense of contentment. Then you get to the food. The server looks much the same as they always did. Bit greyer round the temples. A few more lines on the face, but that doesn't matter. Happens to us all.
You take that first bite, expecting immeasurable pleasure. But it doesn't come. You chew a bit longer. Hmm, no. Definitely something off. You carry on, not saying anything, but something is amiss. No problem, maybe chef was having an off day. Let's reserve judgement until the mains arrive.
You dig into that. Chew awhile. Cogitate. No, this isn't how you remembered it. Gristly, a bit lacking in flavour. Have they changed chef recently? No - you glance through to the open plan kitchen. He's still there, soaked in sweat and bounding around with limitless energy, hair flopping around (but not in the food). The kitchen staff look the same too, older and hopefully wiser, like the chef, but no obvious personnel alterations.
Dessert time. By now you're not too fussed about whether you'll finish or not. A few bites of pudding - nope. This is terrible. You think about asking for money off the bill, but you know you won't. You're too polite. You settle up and quietly moan about how poor an experience it was, before getting into the car and driving home, where you'll probably have a couple of slices of toast and a wank before bed.
Where am I going with this (deliberately) meandering analogy? It is, in culinary terms, the equivalent of listening to 'Antidepressants' Suede's tenth album offering; the follow-up to 2022's desperately lacking 'Autofiction'. And so I don't have to actually discuss 'Antidepressants', but that's why you're here, so I guess I'd better bite on that leather strap and get it over with.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not hating on Suede for no apparent reason. I grew up with them, lamented their initial break-up and hiatus, revelled in their reformation and return, and felt 2018's The Blue Hour was a real career highlight that held up against their revered trio of initial LPs. But, as with some relationships - although I'm loathe to introduce another analogy to this review - things can fizzle out, and unfortunately that appears to be the case here.
Much has been made of Suede's foray into 'post-punk' and 'gothic rock', and that's all very well, but any genre has to be a good fit for the band venturing into it. You'd not expect Sabrina Carpenter to crack open the 'post-punk' canister for her new release, would you? And neither - really - should Suede. One of the first things that you pick up about this album is the furthering of Brett Anderson's liking for a bit of spoken word. Brett has started doing this in recent years, little snippets of talking, like he's wandered into a room and is trying to remember what the fuck he went in for. The title track is a great example of this, where Brett tells us: "And this is the house that you saved up for/These are the windows and these are the walls". Very insightful. Presumably it has doors and a sofa of some description, too!
The second is that regrettably, quality control at Suede HQ is starting to slip. If Suede were to decide they are now a "museum" act and tour what material they have, instead of insisting on releasing new albums to diminishing returns (see Kraftwerk, who certainly haven't done themselves any harm by adopting this model since about 2005), I'd not be sad. At the present time, it's the kindest thing for them. If things carry on, they run a real risk of diluting their legacy to such an extent the chaff outweighs the wheat. You don't want to go like Johnny Cash, who was obsolete for much of the 1980s, before finding critical and commercial success again.
The next issue with the 2025 version of Suede is a distinct jarring between the band's view on their sound, and what is actually being released. After the release of Autofiction, Anderson spoke of the next album being much more experimental. Unless sessions were abandoned en masse, there's very little to suggest any experimentation with their sound or lyrics. It's as if eleven outtakes from the Autofiction sessions were used to make up this album instead. I'm not averse to bands progressing and evolving - it should be an expectation. But when you don't deliver on such fervent talk of "experimenting", you need to have a look at yourselves.
In fact, after the true shock (and joy) of The Blue Hour's use of choirs, strings, soundscapes and a more cinematic, conceptual feel to proceedings, it's a definite step backwards. Anderson referred to their sound on 'Autofiction' being "warts and all" - rough edges included, but that can also smack of a lack of discipline - "just whack out what we record and we'll call it our 'raw, primordial album...'". That very much feels like most of this album.
Much of what is on offer here sounds like an alternate reality version of Suede, a Temu rip-off, a weird reimagining of the band as we knew them, just nowhere near as accomplished. It's as if a rogue AI program has infiltrated their camp and learned as much as it can from the quirks, tropes and feel of Suede's back catalogue, before putting out 40 minutes of approximated, post-punk-lite, using Anderson's lyrical palette as a starting point.
If scientific tests DO indeed find this is a "post-punk" album (and the closest I can detect are some twanging guitars and bass that actually sound a BIT like Martha and the Muffins' 'Echo Beach' from time to time), there's a hell of a lot better you could be spending your time listening to, instead of Suede attempting to re-invent the wheel and finding out they've created a triangle with strange sticky-outy bits all over it.
You may wonder about the lack of reference to specific tracks - there's a reason for this. None of them are actually that distinguishable from each other. Once the album plays, they all appear to flop out in one jellified lump, like someone's innards falling out after they've been ran over by a train. They slowly leak into your ears, to such an extent I had to keep asking Alexa to tell me which track we were on.
It's not all bad. 90% of it, but not all: 'Trance State' is a fine song, and perhaps the only one that garners any praise in this review whatsoever. When I initially heard 'Antidepressants' (the song) played live at a Manchester show over a year ago, I didn't think it was too bad, but now I've heard the actual lyrics, I take that back. We had a similar situation with 'Autofiction', where only 'She Still Leads Me On' and 'Turn Off Your Brain and Yell' really made a lasting impression.
There'll be countless fans urging me to stick with it, but they are just as irritating as those people who suggest you bear with a crap TV show "because it gets really good around Season Four" - nope, I'm out. There's far too much good music out there to be wasting time and effort with sub-standard efforts like this, where even repeated listening doesn't gel the songs as modern classics, but rather reinforces the opinion that they're about as impactful and hard-hitting as the coffee-table floatiness and barely-there pointlessness of singers like Dido (remember him?)
Maybe they are growers - but even then, there has to be that spark of attraction...SOMETHING that makes you forgive minor flaws and give it another go. But there's nothing, I've tried - this is 40 minutes of feather-light, forgettable indie rock by a band who should really think about packing it in if this is the level we're at now.
Even the artwork for the album is so hilariously overwrought that it cannot be taken seriously. Anderson, his face black with shadow, topless, with what at first glance look like large butterfly wings either side of him, like he's the result of some horrific David Cronenberg body-horror movie. Apparently its based on a 1962 photograph from an issue of Vogue magazine, where the artist Francis Bacon posed between two large slabs of meat. Instead of...whatever it's meant to evoke, it feels like a still image from a vague, mock-Surrealist perfume ad. Style over substance. 'Antidepressants' by Dior, un parfum pour homme.
Ultimately, I guess I just feel - as a Suede fan - cheated, short-changed, and let down by a band who were once so adept at tapping into the feeling of a time and of their fans. Now it feels very much like it's a "listen to us career down some blind alley of our own choosing on a knackered bicycle, whether you damn well like it or not" attitude. The fact the majority of Suede fans I've asked about this album tell you it's a "career-best", and the majority of the music press have fawned all over it makes me wonder if it's just me. Am I past being a Suede fan? Am I being too critical? I'm sorry, I just can't connect with or decipher this phase of Suede at all. It's alien territory. Bodysnatcher time. Nor can I tell you how they scrape themselves out of this rut, either. I realise I'm in a minority (possibly of one) but people need to stop kidding themselves that this is the masterpiece the band believe it to be. Even just looking at the quality of material on this album - Suede fan or not - its a LONG way from what would be expected.
Brett Anderson - whilst still my unashamed man-crush - has expressed in interviews he really feels the band are in a creative purple patch right now, but guys, if this is the best you have to offer (and will probably churn out another album in this style before long if rumours of a trilogy consisting of 'Autorfiction', 'Antidepressants' and whatever hell we have to come are true) then I'm sorry - going back to that restaurant at the beginning, I'm faking my child being ill and buggering off from the restaurant now. If I'm lucky, I'll get home in time for Match of the Day.
You can get the bill. I'm off.