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“Life is Endless, Life is a Moment”
suede: a retro-flection, POSTLUDE, Antidepressants (and a playlist)
When I took on this Suede retro-flection series, I thought it would start with their 1993 self-titled album and end with 2022’s Autofiction. I understood the scope of what I was undertaking. It would be both an album-by-album look back at the records I loved and loathed, and an introduction to who my old favourite band had become after I stopped listening to them. I expected there would be a fair amount of personal reflection, possibly self-examination and questioning old values and opinions. I knew that it would not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is (or so we’ve been told). As well, I knew that hardly anyone would be reading this in real-time, if at all (and if you have, thank you), which gave me the freedom to set aside any expectations or responsibilities and let this project take shape as it unfolded before me.
What I couldn’t have predicted was how much the act of writing itself would change the way I hear these records. Albums I once dismissed revealed hidden corners (hello, Head Music and Bloodsports); others I had placed on pedestals showed their cracks (calling you out, Coming Up). Somewhere along the way, Suede’s catalogue stopped being just a relic of the past and became a mirror for who I’ve been, who I am, and maybe who I’m becoming.
This process has also been about more than Suede. Starting the act of just being [t]here meant consciously choosing to move my writing practice forward by looking backward. For the better part of two decades, I’d been immersed almost exclusively in contemporary Canadian music, living and writing very much in the present tense. This project gave me permission to step outside that cycle and reflect on the records that shaped me long before I was publishing anywhere. In a way, it’s the kind of writing I always wished I had done when I was younger, back when my life had a secret soundtrack that only I was privy to; back to a time where I didn’t have the confidence or the faith to believe that anyone would be remotely interested in what I had to say.
So, now I have the nerve to publish my thoughts online where anyone can (and still likely won’t) stumble upon them. And no, I don’t particularly care if anyone agrees with me or not (but a like or a restack would be nice from time to time). I feel as if this closing post in the first reflective series on a single artist is not the closing loop I had anticipated it to be. I feel like I have more questions than ever left to explore. Which is wholly appropriate given that mid-project, my subjects decided to throw an unexpected curveball at me and announce a new album.
Antidepressants turns out to be the perfect way to end this series. I began with albums I knew almost by heart (Dog Man Star), moved into ones I had never bothered listening to (Night Thoughts, The Blue Hour), and detoured into side projects that stretched the band’s orbit ( solo Bernard Butler and The Tears). Now I’m finishing with a brand new record, one I’m hearing in real time alongside everyone else. After a year spent writing in retrospect, I’ve come full circle to the present tense, which feels like the most genuine way possible to close this reflection (and, maybe, to open what comes next). In a way, this is where this project was always leading me: to the collision of then and there with here and now—memory and immediacy. It is a chance to close my reflection on Suede, not in the past tense, but in the present.
Antidepressants opens with “Disintegrate,” which wastes no time in throwing you into its tension and angst. A disembodied voice cycles between “connected, disconnected” over a pummeling one-note bass line that eventually swaths the song in distortion and torques it to life. Staccato guitars drive the track forward with a ferocious post-punk energy, yet there’s an underlying weariness, a sense of being caught in a loop that doesn’t let up. “Disintegrate” is abrasive, vital, and disorienting; it leans heavily on the dark vibes and sinister imagery of the album art and very much feels of a piece with Autofiction (prompting me to speculate that Suede still have another album in them to complete this latest trilogy.
“Dancing with the Europeans” swaps that raw, punk-infused energy for something more anthemic and melodically taut. Cut from the same cloth as Suede’s signature sweeping tracks, it moves with rhythmic precision while maintaining a certain lyrical opacity. Brett Anderson leans into lower registers and spoken-word cadences (a style that first emerged on The Blue Hour and Autofiction), letting lines like “There's something inside, craves the artificial life / There's something inside that craves the blue and yellow lights,” drift through like hypnotic suggestions.
There’s a looseness to “Dancing with the Europeans” that contrasts with the volatility of “Disintegrate,” suggesting that Antidepressants might be a manic swing through emotions and styles. The title track is the first real clue of where we’re going. Employing more of Anderson’s now-signature sing-speak vocal style, “Antidepressants” ✦ is a kinetic blast of chaos and confusion that genuinely gives me the kind of butterflies that fluttered in my gut the first time I heard “Animal Nitrate.” I couldn’t help but hear some elements of PiL's wiry, angular sound in Richard Oakes’ guitar and Anderson’s deadpan drawl. By the time “Antidepressants” comes to a juddering halt, I felt as if both Suede and producer Ed Buller had made amends for the piss-poor production work on “Moving” from their debut, delivering a beautifully neurotic banger.
Antidepressants’ title track is the first instance where I started to hear faint tethers to Suede’s past emerge. These loose threads amid the energy and immediacy feel reflective without weighing the band down in nostalgia. The most obvious example of this is “Sweet Kid,” a song about Anderson’s son that feels the most Suede-coded of the lot. They could have easily plucked it from any point in their catalogue, but only a 50-plus Anderson can give it this particular fraught emotional resonance. He loves his son, sure—but Anderson is no weepy-eyed dad looking at the world through rose-coloured aviators. He’s a weathered, recovered addict who’s seen his fair share of shit and knows he “can’t promise [his son] a miracle,” and that once his “body belongs to the worms,” his bloodline will continue to flow through his son’s veins.
Just as “Sweet Kid” frames fatherhood as a continuation of the bloodline, Antidepressants as a whole feels like Suede reflecting on their own lineage. They’re a band keenly aware of their history, infusing elements of their back catalogue into the veins of new songs as a way of keeping their past alive while moving forward into the present. “The Sound and the Summer” sharpens that reflection with references to the band’s early rush of fame, “the sound and the summer that made me.” Fuelled by fan adoration and critical acclaim, bassist Mat Osman and drummer Simon Gilbert underpin the track with a revving rhythm. Oakes’ chiming guitar (reminding me of the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary”) cuts through like the whistling air rushing past an open window as Anderson, “trapped in this miracle of glass and steel,” likens their career trajectory to an out-of-control car careening down the motorway: “With the sound of police cars giving chase / Put your foot to the pedal, you are moments from disgrace / With our arsm out the window, our heels on the dash / ‘Cause you’ve never been loved til you’ve been loved in a crash.”
Antidepressants boasts the most solid run of opening songs on a Suede album since Coming Up. And though they shift gears down with “Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star,” they don’t let up on the intensity. Forgoing his lower register, Anderson pushes his voice heavenward when he sings “Between an atom and a star” like reverse punctuation. It’s one of two tracks under three minutes on Antidepressants, but one of its most affecting in its efficiency. Where an older model Suede may have luxuriated in extended guitar solos and over-orchestration, it is a sleek and slim slice of mellodrama that adds depth and dimension and just the right moment.
“Broken Music for Broken People” pumps up the energy with another treatise on the music industry churn and the saving power of a solid melody: “We believed in something rather than nothing / And our hell was our shame was our heaven, yeah / And I’d come alive in your arms.” “Criminal Ways” is a brief, muscular workout that wipes away the gloss of glam rock, launching into “Trance State,” a showcase for Neil Codlin’s glassy keyboards. Oddly, given its ballad-like tempo, “June Rain” is the one track on Antidepressants where Suede, and Anderson in particular, sound like they’re running out of time, racing to say everything they’ve wanted to say before the clock runs out.
Echoing the song cycle style Suede employed to impressive effect on Night Thoughts, Antidepressants segues from “June Rain” into its elegiac closing track, “Life is Endless, Life is a Moment.” For an album that roared into life with wiry, angular post-punk energy, it’s a strikingly dark conclusion, an admission that every burst of vitality eventually dissolves into shadows. “Hate me if you must / Love me when I’m dust,” Anderson intones over a Joy Division-paced dirge, before calling out the title’s declarative statement as if he’s running out of breath.
But that’s the thing: Suede are far from taking their last breath. As much as it teeters on the brink of mortality, Antidepressants is very much alive. My initial impression was that this is the sound of urgency, the product of a band determined to make something of substance. Whether that drive is a result of their survivalist mentality or an attempt to stave off the stench of nostalgia wafting off some of their cool Britanina contemporaries feels immaterial, really; now, as they always have, Suede exist in a category and class of their own. Who would have predicted the fey, androgynous glam rockers of 1992 would turn out an album in 2025 with this much passion and finesse, let alone it being their tenth? The closing second of “Life is Endless, Life is a Moment” captures the spirit and essence perfectly. Everything abruptly drops off as Anderson exhales the word “life,” leaving the last line hanging in the air, uncompleted. Is life endless? Is it a moment? Is there ever a definitive answer?
For me, getting to experience Antidepressants at the tail-end of my reflection on Suede’s history comes with a similar sense of urgency and uncertainty. What started as a backward glance has unexpectedly influenced the present more than I imagined it would. I know it’s only 14 essays, which is minor in the scope of how many posts and reviews I’ve written over the last 20 years, but it feels like it’s been the most involved and prolonged writing project I’ve ever taken on, one that I wasn’t certain I’d complete when I started it. I have repeatedly asked myself who would want to read what a 50-year-old man-boy thinks about a bunch of records from 30 years ago? What’s the point of putting all of this out there online, adding to the incessant noise already clogging our brains?
I don’t know the answer. I don’t think there is one. I also don’t care one way or another, quite frankly. What I do know is that writing about and living with Suede over the last year has helped connect my past and present self, closing a gap that I didn’t realize existed. There was a part of me that was abandoned on an island, feeling alone, isolated, and forgotten. This work has been a lifeboat, reuniting me with that lost version of myself. I can’t help but mourn for all the time I wasted being separated in that way, while also feeling full of gratitude that I’m finally here.
Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to hear [t]here playlist on Music + Tidal.
a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩
I made a playlist for you:
