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Britpop legends Suede are back together after 11 years and rather than resting on their pretty hefty reputation and simply sticking to playing their greatest hits like some of their peers from the same era, the five-piece have released a new album with completely fresh material.
As Suede return with Bloodsports, we caught up with frontman, Brett Anderson to get his thoughts on the charts today, the chances of a Britpop revival and why his band decided to return with new material...
Hello Brett. Was it easy to click back into being Suede or did it take some work?
It’s easy to play songs from the past; I think bands get seduced by that. They get back into the studio for the first time and play the old hits, thinking the magic was still there. They are playing songs that had a certain magic and they wrote them at a really exciting time in their lives. I think that’s a very seductive thing and it can be misleading. Just because you can play songs from 20 years ago and they still sound good doesn't mean the magic is there. The true test of a band is actually creating new stuff. For me, that’s always been the test of any band and you’re only ever as good as your last album or your last song.
If Bloodsports is well received, do you see that as a good note to finish on or will it spur you on to write another record?
I’d like to make another record, but I think we have to wait and see how the dust settles and how we feel about it. One of our motivational things for this was to put a really great full stop to Suede and if we end it tomorrow then the last Suede record would be a great one. I don’t know yet, we’ll have to wait and see. I think when you find a creative partnership and there’s creative chemistry there you should really hold on to it. It doesn't happen everywhere and when it works you should keep exploring it.
Did you feel pressure to make sure Bloodsports was one of your best records yet?
As I've always said the biggest pressure is the one you put on yourself. If you don’t have that drive and that desire to create then there’s no amount of external pressure that will make you do good work. There’s a huge competition we were in to try and equal or better what we had done in the past and that’s quite a hard thing to do. When you look at a career of making music for 20 years, you’re up against a lot of fine work that you’re competing against. That was the biggest pressure – the competition against ourselves.
Watch the video to Suede's 'It Starts And End With You below:
Did you write the new record with Suede fans in mind or with a view to appealing to a new audience?
With Suede fans in mind. I think it would be crazy to come back with a record after 11 years and try to reinvent yourself. You need to re-establish the thread of who you were. It’s not like the record didn't have any ambition, it had a hell of a lot ambition, but I don’t think we wanted to go for a completely new sound. It just wouldn't have made any sense. It would be like reforming an old band with a bunch of new people. There needs to be a certain continuity with it.
You've talked openly about Suede's last album not being up to scratch. How do you feel about Bloodsports? Are the band back to their best?
I think it’s really up to third parties to decide, but what I can say is it feels very exciting and we are really enjoying playing together and we really enjoyed making this record. I'm really glad we made it and the couple of little live outings we've had so far have been great. I can’t say if we are back to our best, I’ll let other people be the judge of that.
You’re the first big Britpop band to return and actually give us a full-length new album. Why do you think the likes of Pulp and Blur have reservations over committing to a full comeback?
Simply because it’s a very hard thing to do and you’re competing against all the things in the past that you've done as a band. Music is about being in the right place at the right time and all of these coincidences of timing that you can’t just replicate ten years later. When Suede first appeared, we were in this crazy maelstrom of excitement everyone was going mad about the band. It was a very exciting time and no one had heard of anything called Britpop. We were writing about being poor, white and English because that’s who we were.
Everyone was very excited about Suede in the early days because we were doing something that led to something quite pivotal and you can’t just re-create that excitement. You can’t just bring it along and expect it to be there. All you can do is make as good a record as you can possibly make. I think the reason we were able to make this record was because we split up on a downturn and I think that was a key thing. We split up just after we’d made our weakest record and I think we wanted to re-write that. Other bands haven’t done that and maybe split up when they were at their peak, I don’t know much about other bands. I’d say it’s about trying to re-write our own history. It’s almost impossible, but we’re going to have a go and see what happens.
Is there anyone else from that era that you would like to see return?
I quite liked Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. No one will have heard of them, but I liked them. They were a great band and made an amazing album called Rattlesnakes. I don’t know if I’d want to see them up on stage. It sounds slightly contradictory and slightly ironic, but I'm not really a big fan of reunions. I think 99 per cent of people get it wrong and they do it for nostalgia or money. It's very hard to re-capture the energy and spontaneity that put you there in the first place. You've got to be slightly mad to do it sometimes. All these bands that I'm really fond of from the past, I'm quite happy for them to stay in the past. I think people get very excited about the idea of reunions, but the reality of it is often a let down.
A lot of people are still hoping for a Britpop revival or at least a return to the guitar sound of the nineties. Do you think this will ever happen?
I think music goes in cycles. At the moment the charts are being dominated by bland pop music, but I think there will be a change because music needs to change and evolve. There will be a period in the future where more interesting music is in the mainstream. As for a Britpop revival I can't think of anything worse. I never really like it at the time let alone 20 years later. You don’t want a whole load of wannabe Britpop bands touring together, it’s just nostalgia. I would have loved to have been around and watched the Velvet Underground the first time, but I wasn't old enough. You can’t re-create that. You can get the members of the band back on stage together, but that’s completely different. The nineties isn't something you can create now. Let the new bands take that spirit and do their own thing with it.
Suede
What do you think when you look at the charts today? Do you think there is something missing?
I very rarely look at today's charts. I don’t’ know, pop music is always crap isn't it? There's been crap pop music in every decade and there's always something to react against. At the moment we have this Pop Idol culture and it is offensive, but it's no more offensive than pop music in previous decades. Even the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll had crap pop music. You've got to look for the pockets of interesting music. There’s still a lot of people making great music. Bands like These New Puritans, Foals, Horrors or Bat For Lashes.
The interesting artists through history have always been the sort of people that you couldn't even invent if you sat up all night trying to think about it. They were original people with charisma that had a voice and you get the sense that all the popstars these days are created by committee which is dull. That’s because businesswise people are f**ked, so that have to make sure they will get sure-fire hits out of these stars.
Noel Gallagher has said recently that there aren't any real rockstars coming through. Would you agree? Why do you think that is?
There's no rock star clichés (in the charts) but I think that's a good thing. We don't need to see another coked up, aggressive, leather-jacketed bore. Music has to evolve you can’t just have the same template over and over again. That was the worst thing about the nineties, the fact that it was a seventies template. The most interesting thing that happened in the nineties was dance music, but that was completely anonymous at the time. Britpop was pretty much a re-hash of the sixties and seventies. Dance music was the thing that was actually challenging and futuristic. When people go into music they are very careerist about it. To be a true artist, you've got to be instinctive and not very self-conscious. Rock ‘n’ roll is about letting your animal side live and I'm not seeing any particularly inspirational figures in the music industry at the moment, but I'm sure they will come through. This very conservative phase we are in at the moment won’t last and who knows we might get another punk explosion or something like that.
What are your plans for the rest of 2013? Can we expect you to be touring the festival circuit?
I don’t think we are going to do many festival. It think we’ll do a little European tour at the end of the year. We are trying to keep it exciting and not pin ourselves down too much. We've got a big day at Alexandra Palace at the end of the month which is going to be great. It’s going to be a big show. We can kind of do big shows now and we know how the dynamics of the crowd works.
Thanks Brett. Suede's brand new album Bloodsports is available now.
