"Dancing with the Europeans" Released: 28 July 2025
Antidepressants is the tenth studio album by English rock band Suede, released on 5 September 2025 through BMG and produced by Ed Buller. Preceded by three singles and a live version of the title track, Antidepressants has been described as a post-punk and gothic rock album with themes such as mortality and modern disconnection, and it is intended to be the second in a trilogy of "black and white" albums, starting with Autofiction (2022). The album debuted on the UK Albums Chart on number 2 and was critically acclaimed upon release.
After the release of their 2022 album Autofiction, frontman Brett Anderson told the NME that the band was already in the process of writing their next album, saying "The next record that we're planning to write, and have already started, is much more experimental."[1] In Mojo magazine, he said that before Autofiction was released, the band had initially intended for its follow-up to take an artier approach: a ballet soundtrack. However, upon the album's warm reception, the project was shelved with two of its tracks ("Between an Atom and a Star" and "Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment") repurposed for Antidepressants.[2] In June 2024, before a performance at the Isle of Wight Festival, Anderson and bassist Mat Osman sat down for an interview with Ben Burrell for Absolute Radio, where the former revealed that the band was recording the album.[3] In a press release, he said that "If Autofiction was our punk record, Antidepressants is our post-punk record." Produced by Suede's longstanding producer Ed Buller, it was recorded between ICP Studios in Brussels, RAK and Sleeper Sounds Studios in London, and RMV Studio in Stockholm,[4] except the deluxe CD bonus tracks which were just recorded at ICP and Sleeper Sounds.[5]
Title and artwork
The album previously had the working title Broken Music for Broken People, which, like Antidepressants, is the name of a track.[2] Anderson had also considered Suppression but decided against it, believing that it was too dark.[6] The front cover alludes to a 1962 Vogue photograph taken by John Deakin of the artist Francis Bacon in which he posed shirtless between two slabs of meat; the photo of Bacon is in turn a reference to his painting Figure with Meat.[7]
Style and themes
Antidepressants has been described in reviews as post-punk,[8][9][10] and gothic rock.[11][12] Like its predecessor, it took a guitar-led approach, with guitarist Richard Oakes at one point elaborating how the stylistic backdrop for Autofiction allowed him draw upon early influences such as Keith Levene (PiL), John McGeoch (Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees), the Fall, and Wire.[2] The album's gothic influence is largely noticeable on tracks like the closer "Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment", cited in Louder Than War for its "tribal drums, spooky low bass line, chiming guitars and ethereal keys".[13] Inspired by contemporary bands' incorporation of spoken word vocals in their music, such as Dry Cleaning, Shame, and Yard Act, Anderson implemented this approach for Autofiction's "Personality Disorder",[14] and on Antidepressants, he leans more heavily into this style.[15] That said, Antidepressants also displays a further propensity towards anthemic choruses.[12] As is often the case throughout Suede's career, the album occasionally shifts to a ballad,[6] notably on the aforementioned ballet project leftovers "Somewhere Between an Atom and Star" and "Life Is Endless...".[7]
There's certainly a sense of memento mori about the record. People might see it as morbid and macabre, but it's actually life-affirming: the reminder of death makes you aware of how precious life is. It's about the joy within a moment when you realise that life is fleeting and you have to live it to the full.
Antidepressants explores themes such as paranoia,[11][16] death,[10][17] and disconnection in the modern age.[6][9][12] While the overall result is dark, both in tone and in subject matter,[9] the lyrics often employ a more optimistic perspective. "Dancing with the Europeans" is a celebration of the connections that people do have in an otherwise disconnected world,[8] and on "Broken Music for Broken People", seen as reminiscent of Suede's 1996 song "Trash",[6][15] it suggests that music offers the socially disenfranchised a means to connect.[18] Interspersed throughout are a series of disembodied voices, introducing the album with the message "connected – disconnected".[12][16] "Sweet Kid" is a song of reassurances toward Anderson's son,[19] told from a frame of reference driven by an awareness of his own mortality.[6]
During the Isle of Wight Festival performance, Suede debuted a track from the forthcoming album, entitled "Antidepressants".[3] On 12 May 2025, the band released a video of a separate live performance of the song from July 2024 at Alexandra Palace, London.[11][20] One week later, Suede revealed the lead single, "Disintegrate", with a black and white music video directed by Chris Turner. The single was also accompanied with details of the album, including the title, artwork, release date, and track listing.[21] After releasing their second single "Trance State" on 11 June,[4] Suede premiered "Dancing with the Europeans" on 28 July with another video by Turner,[22] filmed during a gig at Bush Hall, London.[23] It was inspired by a separate gig in Spain that helped to bring Anderson out of a depressive state.[6]
In promotion for Antidepressants, the September 2025 issue of the UK magazine Mojo features the band on one of two alternate front covers, the other being Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys; the issue includes a 15-track covermount CD of Suede material with the title Outsiders: Live. Rare. Unreleased. 1990–2025, containing the aforementioned performance of "Antidepressants" at Alexandra Palace, a demo of "Disintegrate", and the album track "Criminal Ways".[24][25] On 26 August 2025, just ten days before its release, Suede performed the album in full at the Clore Ballroom in Southbank Centre, London, where they are scheduled to return in September for a week-long residency dubbed Suede Takeover. During the concert, Anderson shared that the band intends for Antidepressants to be the second part in a trilogy of "black and white" albums including Autofiction, with the third part to be released later in the decade.[26]
Release
Antidepressants was released on 5 September 2025 through BMG.[13][21] In addition to standard physical formats (CD, vinyl, and cassette), a deluxe CD containing three bonus tracks was made available and packaged in a "Hessian slip case",[27] and the Japanese CD contains a separate bonus track entitled "Medication".[28]
Antidepressants debuted on the UK Albums Chart at number two, selling 16,091 units in the first week, more than its predecessor Autofiction. Suede had led on the midweek update chart days earlier, and while Antidepressants led in physical and digital sales by a considerable margin, the unavailablity of Spotify data during much of the week obscured the number of sales-equivalent streams. Ultimately, Sabrina Carpenter's Man's Best Friend retained the number one position from the previous week.[29] The album did, however, debut at number one on both the Scottish and UK Independent Albums Charts.[30]
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Antidepressants received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 90 out of 100 from 11 critic scores.[32] AnyDecentMusic?, another aggregator, gave it an average rating of 8.6 out of 10 from a sample of 13 critical reviews.[31]
In a five star review for Mojo magazine, Victoria Segal called it a "defiant, death-defying record – as much joyride as memento mori", saying Brett Anderson's voice "cuts through sharper and stranger than ever".[10]AllMusic's Matt Collar opined that with Antidepressants, Suede "conjure the striking urgency and stylism of their classic early work" with "a sound that manages to feel fresh" despite its influences, explaining "Much of this fresh intensity is due to singer Brett Anderson's soulful, poetic gravitas; few rock singers have aged as well, both vocally and with a sense of their place in the pop firmament."[17] In Record Collector, Shawn Curran said that "Improbably, they've pulled off the rarest of feats: a middle-aged rock band who remain interesting and invigorated, going from strength to strength", singling out Richard Oakes as "the album's essential component".[6] In The Line of Best Fit, Matt Young said it "feels less like a late-career coda and far more like a daring new beginning", concluding "Antidepressants is not about memory, it's real life now, trembling in its own imperfection. Not necessarily healing, it's just honest. And sometimes, that's what we need most."[9] Emma Harrison, writing for Clash magazine, called it "subversive... confrontational, unfiltered and arguably one of their most electrifying releases to date."[8]
Comparing it to its predecessor in a review for Louder Than War, Wayne Carey thought that "This next chapter is the group going from strength to strength when you can't see them getting any better.... Does it do what Autofiction did? I say so and I guarantee this will be on your playlist for the rest of the year."[13] Claire Biddles of The Quietus praised the album for continuing to capture the feeling of "dynamism" they get from Suede's live performances. She analogised the band's trajectory to the transition from their debut Suede (1993) to Dog Man Star (1994): "If Autofiction was the first entry in a new triptych, considering the same themes at a more mature stage of life, then Antidepressants is a fine middle panel: a warp of the formula that is considered and progressive, if not as immediately thrilling."[7] In Classic Pop magazine, John Earls said that "Few bands 30 years in are capable of making an album as current as Autofiction. Fewer still are able to maintain the pace and follow it with another LP if anything even more aligned to current thrills", taking sole exception to "Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star" by criticising the "more traditional" track for sounding "more mild ones than 'Wild Ones'." Despite Earls' reservations, they said "Frankly, who cares, when it all coalesces so dramatically" on the closer "Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment".[15] Jack Walters of PopMatters, in an 8 out of 10 review, went further in their praise of the track by calling it "the most powerful ending to an album that you are going to hear this year—if not this decade."[12]
Stephen Troussé of Uncut deemed it their "most unhinged, intoxicating Suede album since Coming Up, and boasts the best first side of a goth album since the Banshees'Juju: a surging wave of desolation that miraculously keeps growing ever grander"; while Troussé was more reserved with praise for the second half of the album, feeling—with the exception of "Broken Music for Broken People" and "June Rain"—"the second side can't quite maintain that pace", they ultimately rated it 8 out of 10.[11] In Spectrum Culture, Will Pinford wrote "There is far more variety and nuance on the second half of the album, but that unfortunately gives Antidepressants a slight sensation of losing momentum, so that it ultimately feels a little longer than its 40-ish minutes." Pinford nonetheless considered it to be "easily" among their best albums and that Anderson's performance, particularly on the closer, "stands as one of the best of his career to date."[19] In DIY, Louisa Dixon's main criticism pertained to lyrical repetition, specifically in "Dancing with the Europeans" and "Criminal Ways", but they thought "overall, Antidepressants is a solid, pleasantly dense record from a band who've been solid for decades yet."[35]
In light of the highly publicised reunions for Oasis and Pulp, both peers of the band during the Britpop era, Ben Hogwood of MusicOMH lauded Suede for their willingless to look forward and address modern concerns: "While most of their peers trade off former glories,... [they] have rolled up their sleeves to fix 21st century life in their unblinking stare." Hogwood finished the five star review by saying "Antidepressants is a musical tour de force from a band at the very height of their powers."[16] Dave Simpson similarly expressed that "Antidepressants is no throwback. It's thoroughly postmodern", adding in a four star review that they believe it is the band's best album since they reunited. According to Simpson, "Great 10th albums by any artist are rare jewels indeed, but this is a late career triumph."[33]
↑ The original Uncut magazine review contained a supplemental interview of Anderson. When the review was ported onto their website, the interview was omitted.[11]
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