Suede saben que no van a volver a copar los titulares de la prensa especializada, no les importa; también saben que no van a conseguir nuevos seguidores, tampoco les importa, no los necesitan. Lo que en realidad han querido con este disco, es regalar a los que ya tienen, un nuevo puñado de emociones con las que poner nombre a todas las malas experiencias que hayan tenido, para hacerles soñar de nuevo. I don’t really know. I’m really cheered by the fact that our fanbase want to be challenged. They want us to do what we do best, but they want us to have a vision. There’s this popular notion that the record-buying or music-listening public are becoming his numbed, brainless entity. Possibly the mainstream is becoming like that, but it’s misleading to think of the world at large like that. There are a lot of people that want to be challenged and want the experience of the album. They don’t want to be humoured by a few anodyne pop songs. They want a journey.”

Which, on the strength of The Blue Hour – the third in a triptych that began, following their 2010 reunion, with Blood Sports in 2013 and continued with Night Thoughts in 2016 – won’t be any time soon. Suede 2.0 are not a heritage band by any stretch of the imagination.There are immediate songs (Wastelands, Mistress, Life Is Golden, Tides, Flytipping...) and there are a bunch of miraculous growers (Chalk Circles, Beyond The Outskirts, All The Wild Places or the unfairly questioned The Invisibles, a monument when played live). In the same interview, Anderson continued to discuss the inspiration for the new record, as well as its character: Mistress is moody, romantic, dramatic and just a little bit sinister, built on a beautiful guitar melody by Richard Oakes, who has long vanquished the ghost of his predecessor Bernard Butler. “You’re nothing like my mother,” Brett sings, somewhat disturbingly, to the titular woman, inquiring: “Do you hold him like her? Do you need him like her? …“You’re not all that he’s got / But you’re all that he want.” Nope, which I’m sure is a relief. So if Suede need to be unpleasant, is there much more baggage of expectation that comes with the band?

Photography By [Inner Sleeve Photography] – Brett Anderson, Ian Grenfell, Neil Codling, Paul Khera, Simon Gilbert, Zelwanka Turner, Luke (21 September 2018). "Suede: The Blue Hour review – a wild ride into a rural nightmare". The Guardian . Retrieved 22 September 2018.

a b Paine, Andre (9 July 2021). "Suede sign to BMG for new album". Music Week . Retrieved 9 July 2021. Today I found a dead bird,” sings Brett Anderson on this album’s Scott Walker-esque centre-piece, ‘Roadkill’. Poor bloody bird, with its “ brittle bones like snapped twigs / Savaged by the tyres and tossed in the tar / Broken in the English dirt / A carcass for the carrying crow”. Set atop a haze of strings and drones, Anderson’s spoken-word lament and the surrounding atmosphere of fog, doom and death capture the essence of ‘The Blue Hour’. Le sigue “Mistress”, un tema carente de batería, más lento, que se soporta, primero sobre la firmeza de los arpegios de Richard Oakes, y el bajo, teclado y cuerdas después. Nos presenta la historia de un affair contada desde el punto de vista de un niño, que ve como su padre engaña a su madre con otra mujer, con todas las dudas que ese hecho le suscita. “Beyond the Outskirts”