Suede are an “anti-nostalgia band”.
The Animal Nitrate hitmakers – who formed in 1989 and went on hiatus in 2003 before reforming in 2010 – are proud to keep looking towards the future and frontman Brett Anderson believes they are the only group of the Britpop era not to dwell on the past.
He told The Sun newspaper: “We’re the anti-nostalgia band.
“If you want a headline, there you go. That’s what we are. That’s the way I think of Suede.
“It’s the way I delineate us from our so-called peers.
“Our creative momentum is all about what we’re doing now — and what we’re going to do next…
“I really feel we’re the only band of our generation that isn’t going through the motions.”
However, the 57-year-old singer insisted he has “no problem with the past” and will always dig from Suede’s back catalogue when performing live.
He said: “I have no problem with the past. When you’re at a festival, it’s suicide just to play the new stuff. You’ve got to pick your weapons.
“There are still absolutely brilliant moments when we play songs from the Nineties but, for us, it’s all about the future.”
And following the release of new album Antidepressants, Brett hopes he and his bandmates can continue to experiment in the years to come.
He said: “We’re still evolving.
“I hope we make some of the best and most challenging music we’ve ever made.
“That is always the goal.”
The Trash singer prefers to write about “simple human emotions” such as love, loss, pain and desire, and personal experience in his songs.
He said: “My family is such a generator of songs for me. You won’t find me doing songs about farming in Kenya like some leftfield band.
“When you’re young, you find them when your girlfriend leaves you or you see some woman on a train that you fancy.
“When you’re older, passions aren’t so fleeting. I’m obsessed with my family and the relationships within my family.”
Brett admitted relationships within the band have changed since the group – which also includes Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling – formed, becoming “more business-orientated” but they are still very close.
He said: “When me and Mat first met, we became very close friends and hung out a lot.
“[But] you spend so much downtime with them, sitting around in hotels and airports, that you’re not going to socialise with them as well.
“I love the guys in my band in a very different way to my family or my friends.
“We’ve been together for such a long time that we have many complex in-jokes.
“We’ll sit and chatter away. If there’s a stranger present, they won’t know what the f*** we’re talking about because we’ll probably be referencing something that happened in 1998.”