7 Questions for Brett Anderson

The Suede singer tells us about their new album

Suede are releasing their ninth LP. Titled Autofiction, the band are calling it their punk album. We put seven questions to lead singer Brett Anderson.

What does punk mean to you?

I’ve called Autofiction “our” punk record not “a” punk record. That’s an important distinction. It’s the values of punk through a Suede lens. I’m not interested in aping a genre so this is still very much a Suede record but with a punk twist – all the rough edges left in and a healthy lack of respect. Also, at times it’s fucking noisy.

Autofiction means … ?

For those who don’t know, “autofiction” is a literary genre that combines fiction and memoir. It struck me that all art could be described as auto fiction – the creative process being very much about manipulating truth and presenting it in a different form. Ostensibly this might come across as vaguely deceitful but in the same way that novelists invent characters to explore human truths, so all artists must to some extent confront elements of fantasy in order to grapple with reality. So we can see that all art sits somewhere on a spectrum with absolute “truth” at one end and pure “fantasy” at the other. In reality no art is either purely one or the other, but a blend of the two.

One of your songs celebrates being 15. Why?

I think it’s a cusp state, a transition point where the lures of the adult world are calling but the constraints of childhood still apply. The music that you first get into as a young teenager will stay with you as a powerful totem for the rest of your life and, in a way, nothing will ever again have that same resonance. The song is less about actually being 15 than that feeling of joie de vivre that can come to you at 15 or at 50. It’s a “You Make Me Feel So Young” for the 21st Century.

Are your children punks?

My proudest moment as a dad was when I walked into a room the other day and my son was voluntarily listening to “Bodies” by the Pistols. I thought smugly to myself, “My work here is done.”

Can you recommend three books?

It’s always so hard as I find other people’s recommendations sometimes utterly random, so I spend almost as much time reading about books as I do actually reading them in order to try and track down the sort of thing I think I’ll like. Anyway, to play the game, here are a few that have twisted my melons: A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale. A complex but incredibly readable story of moral paradox, loyalty and family. A hidden beauty. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Pretty obvious choice but if there’s anyone who hasn’t read it, I really envy you the pleasure to come. McEwan is the absolute master of the intelligent page-turner and this is his dexterous masterpiece. Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty. The ultimate suburban noir thriller. Bears reading and re-reading. Intricately plotted, poised, utterly real.

Joy Division or New Order?

Both great of course. I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with Mr Sumner on a few occasions and always loved being in his company. He’s a fascinating man, both utterly down to earth and incredibly arty. The role his voice plays in the dynamics of New Order fascinates me. I’m always on the point of blabbing to him like a fan-boy but manage to check myself at the last moment, thank God.

Are you having fun in your fifties?

Lots of Autofiction is an attempt to frame how I feel as a fifty-something man. It’s a complex state. In some senses I’m more settled than I’ve ever been, I have a family I love and a career and relative financial stability which from the outside seems comfortable. As we all know though, life is more complicated and nuanced than at first it might seem. In many ways I’ve found my fifties extremely challenging. I no longer feel young and there are anxieties and neuroses that creep in as one hurtles towards old age that my younger self would probably have sneered at. But without wishing to wallow in self pity it’s the revealing of these inner states that I’ve always tried to do with my writing. I like to think of myself as a kind of expressionist song-writer – the Edvard Munch of Indie if you want a silly soundbite, scratching my pain onto the canvas of the song.

Suede’s new album Autofiction is out on today and tickets for their 2023 headline tour are available here.

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