Longstanding Britpop legends Suede have announced, whilst in the midst of a lengthy European tour, a return to the UK with 2 intimate dates at London’s Electric Ballroom (October 5th and 6th) to celebrate the release of their 9th full-length LP Autofiction. Set for release on September 16th, the album will also feature the new single ‘She Still Leads Me On’. You can hear the new track below. Tickets for the London dates go on sale here on Friday (May 27th) with a special fan pre-sale set to begin on Thursday (May 26th).
Suede in a live context, at the moment anyway, consists of long-term (arguably founding) members Brett Anderson, Mat Osman, and Simon Gilbert on vocals, bass, and drums respectively – with Richard Oakes and Neil Codling filling out the sound with guitars, backing vocals, and keys since well into the 2000’s. This has been the band’s line-up since their comeback album Bloodsports in 2013. If the critical and commercial reception of the band in this orientation is anything to go by, then Suede may be onto yet another success in an era that has almost forgotten about Britpop.
AUTOFICTION, the upcoming album from Suede featuring lead single ‘She Still Leads Me On’, is available to pre-order now from https://t.co/3DTE4GKm6z. pic.twitter.com/JmxeIZv2xl
— Suede HQ (@suedeHQ) May 23, 2022
While the ’90s in the UK were pretty much dominated by the cool new thing that was Britpop, the longevity of the genre was really to be desired. The guitar-driven attitude worked well for the 90’s but then the boisterous nature was seemingly dropped for something sleeker and more approachable in the 2000’s. Oasis forgot how to write good music in 1997 (I will stand by the fact that Be Here Now is an underrated gem), and Blur took the Britpop sound somewhere completely different after the whole Parklife debacle finished, you could argue that Jarvis Cocker kept the sound going for a while but anything he did outside of Pulp definitely went down a more spoken word route… not really Britpop is it. But Suede have survived. They may not have achieved the same great heights as some more common household names, but all of their output since 2013 has been solid. Respectable even, in a time when they could have been very easily forgotten.
When speaking of the new album in a press release, Anderson explained, “Autofiction is our punk record. No whistles and bells. Just the five of us in a room with all the glitches and fuck-ups revealed; the band themselves exposed in all their primal mess… Autofiction has a natural freshness, it’s where we want to be.”
