Suede’s fifth album since their 2013 reformation continues their creative resurgence. Singer Brett Anderson suggests that if 2022’s Autofiction – their best post-reunion album until now – was their punk album, Antidepressants is its post-punk sibling. Influences such as Magazine, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees feed into edgier but otherwise trademark Suede guitar anthems. Helmed again by longtime producer Ed Buller, Richard Oakes’s killer riffs maraud and jostle, Anderson’s moods run the gamut from impassioned to reflective and the rhythm section brew up a right old stomp.

The 57-year-old singer has spoken about his keenness to not be seen as a heritage act and to attract younger audiences. Antidepressants is no throwback. It’s thoroughly postmodern. The eerie background noises and sonic atmospheres chime perfectly with Anderson’s lyrics about what he calls “tensions of modern life, the paranoia, the anxiety, the neurosis” as the band extol the virtues of connection in a dislocated world.

Glorious opener Disintegrate invites us to embrace mortality and decay (“Come down and disintegrate with me”). Other songs reflect from a midlife perspective on subjects such as humanity’s transient beauty, breakdowns, toxic relationships or societal dependence on medication. There’s a darker energy altogether on the funereal June Rain, a “vignette of a damaged person” in which Anderson, in character, desperately but movingly concludes: “So I close my eyes and walk into the traffic flow.” Great 10th albums by any artist are rare jewels indeed, but this is a late career triumph.