“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.” Those words were spoken at one time by David Bowie, and thus are gospel to us here on The Art of Longevity podcast. Fortunately, some bands still live by that same philosophy. For evidence, we revisit the world of Suede, this time with Mat Osman.

SEASON 12, EP 6: passion, vitality, bloody-mindedness. suede defy the odds again

A recent piece in The Times by Will Hodgskinson caught my eye, about how bands get more boring, or less daring, as their career progresses and band members age. The piece was based on ‘Harmonic & Rhythmic analysis’ of a bunch of bands Including REM, Coldplay, Radiohead and for some inexplicable reason, the late great Kirsty MacColl. I’ve since exchanged emails with the author Dr Nick Collins of Durham University and read the academic paper. The results were a little inconclusive for my simple brain, but Coldplay didn’t come out of it too well. Radiohead fared much better. Perhaps a huge amount of in-depth analysis wasn’t necessary to come up with this conclusion. 

Some bands really do play it safe as they age - perhaps running short on ideas or looking to appeal to the nostalgia circuit. Some bands end up more like living jukeboxes - a revolving circuit of greatest hits tours and concert performances that are more like watching a film than real people. We mention no names here, but if there is one, indisputable fact - it is that Suede is not among these bands. 

Suede has refused to become boring. Somehow, this band of 40 years have gone the other way - more exciting and visceral than ever. Suede are not hanging about to become their own echo! Albums like Autofiction and now, its immediate follow-up Antidepressants are not just the proverbial ‘return to form’ type records. They are nothing short of a reinvention. Mat Osman, co-founder member with Brett Anderson and bass player, shares his views on the new Suede record:

“It feels like Autofiction on steroids. If Autofication was a TV show, Antidepressants is the film version. We took everything more widescreen with this record”. 

However, for Osman - you can forget about that old cliche of a band making music for themselves and hoping the world will agree (that’s what Rick Rubin has been telling us with The Creative Act: A Way of Being and to be fair, more than a few artists have told me it works for them. It's not for Suede. Instead, the band’s creative mission has been guided by their fans - their reactions at live shows, to the band directly, but also the band’s own interpretation of what a Suede audience really wants. 

“A band without an audience isn’t a band. It’s a hobby,” Osman declares. That emotional connection is Mat’s affirmation - fan tattoos of favourite songs, tears at gigs, and stories about Suede songs at weddings. This fan connection is Suede’s compass in the band’s 4th career phase. And so we return to a key central theme of longevity; usefulness to people. 

“As I get older, those moments where someone says, ‘That song helped me,’ mean everything,” he reflects. “That’s what I’m proud of. There’s a community feel [between the band and the fans] that becomes more and more important. 

It’s evident from this ‘Revisited’ episode, that Osman and Brett Anderson have a fair degree of telepathy on many things - a shared vision that no doubt has added focus to Suede’s current run of creative form. They even agree on the most ironic thing about where Suede has arrived; that they were the least likely band to survive in the first place. 

“Longevity is not something we strived for, it just happened as a side effect of our bloody mindedness and passion for making music”.

Of course, the seven year hiatus helped - a period of convalescence so to speak, after the exhausting disappointment of their 5th album A New Morning. The distance allowed the band to rediscover their core strengths and come back focused and self-aware, a vitality that has defined their post-hiatus work. Before the double barrel of Autofiction and Antidepressants, both The Blue Hour and the band’s second collection of B-sides Sci-Fi Lullabies Volume 2 (first conceived as an idea by Brett Anderson on this very show we say!) were also superb. 

“Having done that taught us what was important about the band, what was great about the band, what was special. “With the music business, over time you learn what’s great about it but also just what you have to cope with”. 

So, if you are looking for inspiration as to how to age well, forget the self-help books and the walking cliche health gurus, get yourself to a Suede gig and see a stick-thin middle aged man drenched head to toe in sweat. And a band in fine form. Failing that, put a recent Suede album on your turntable and crank up the volume. As Mat puts it:

“Getting older (In a band, relationship, in life) is a constant battle against cynicism and mediocrity. It’s so easy to slip into routine and do what you’ve always done. It’s the death of everything”.

Not here it isn’t. 

Suede’s 10th album Antidepressants is available September 5th. Suede Takeover London’s Southbank soon.