In more than two decades since Suede (they’re known here as The London Suede) last toured in the U.S., the band has split up, reunited and released four more acclaimed albums. Their latest, Autofiction, finds singer Brett Anderson examining his memories, motivations and the public persona he created in the early ’90s when Suede was the most hyped band in the U.K. since The Smiths.

In the U.K., Suede famously appeared on magazine covers even before releasing any music. Making good on that early hype, the band released a series of classic albums, racked up awards and weathered a lineup change that made it even more popular seemingly everywhere but here.

In the U.S., The London Suede was relegated to cult status with a small but loyal gang of fans–particularly in the Bay Area.

Days away from their first North American tour in 23 years, bassist Mat Osman sat down to chat about the 2003 breakup, reunion and what keeps the band going now. That was a good thing because the band wasn’t having fun anymore, he explained.

“I guess this weird machine kept on rolling, whether it was working or not,” he said. “When we finally split, I was kind of glad.”

The 2010 reunion happened because the members, who include vocalist Brett Anderson, drummer Simon Gilbert, guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling felt they still had to finish a mission.

“I think we all felt there was kind of unfinished business; that the band had finished with a whimper rather than a bang, and there was kind of a sense of wanting to set things right,” he said. “This time ’round, we’re going to just appreciate the preciousness of it, so the gigs that we do and the records that we make, they’re far more precious to me now than they were in 1999.”

But even after reuniting, another 12 years would pass before the band returned.

RIFF: Many U.K. indie acts of the ’90s had a complicated relationship with the U.S. That was the same with Suede, right?

Mat Osman: Everything was going crazy in Europe, and there is this sense that to break America, you have to just go over there and live there and do that. And I don’t think we had it in us. I look at the bands that did really well, and they … lived there for six months. 

But you did spend some time here. What do you remember from that first U.S. tour?

It was absolutely crazy. You have to remember that we’d never been anywhere, any of us. We weren’t professional about it at all. It was kind of a month of partying. We were very ragged. Sometimes we were absolutely brilliant and sometimes we were just slightly falling apart. Same clothes every night, meeting new people every night. But I remember it being absolutely glorious.

I can remember the first time we played in California, just thinking, “Well, there’s no fucking point in us being here, we don’t fit in in any way.” People were staring at us in our London clothes, our skimmed-milk complexions. Then I remember turning up at the gig and just seeing this queue of the Californians who obviously didn’t fit in, either. Latino kids, lots of people in black and people who looked like they’d just got up [or] they’d never been to bed. It was kind of like, “Shit, our people are here, too!” That was a really, really cheering moment.

In many ways, Autofiction is a look back at those days from the perspective of men now in their 50s. And you wrote all those songs in rented rehearsal rooms, huffing your own gear like a band just starting out. Why was the time right for an approach like that?

It was the five of us in the rehearsal room learning to be Suede again. Weirdly, I think we’ve done it before. When Bernard [Butler] left and Richard [Oakes] joined [in 1994], we had to start again. Then when we reformed [in 2010], it was exactly the same and we did the same thing. This is the first time that we’ve done it without there being some huge disaster that was causing it. You kind of itch for some gritty and grubby after a while.

We thought what we’ll do is we’ll get a studio, but we’ll invite a whole load of fans down and spend a week kind of road-testing them and bang them in front of people and see what grabs people. Literally the moment that we sorted that out, COVID happened and it was the world’s most impossible idea. But in a weird way it kind of worked, because the rehearsal rooms that we use closed down during COVID and they just gave us the key. And we just played day after day after day for the sheer joy of doing it. By the end of it, we had this record.

You are all over these songs. The bass is mixed way upfront, like a post-punk record, with echoes of Peter Hook, Steven Severin and Simon Gallup in your playing. That’s a new dimension for the band.

“Shadow Self” and “Black Ice”—Richard wrote those lines, because this is kind of his record in a way. When he joined the band, we gave him almost like homework to learn the bands that Suede loved. But this one comes from his record collection, his adolescence. He was a huge fan of The Fall and The Banshees. He really took this record by the scruff of the neck.

Singer Brett Anderson wrote two autobiographies over the last few years. How did him reexamining his life and your long friendship inform this album?

We’re in our 50s, and I’m really proud that he isn’t singing about nightclubs and dating and all these kind of things; that what he’s doing is finding those Suede elements—the tension and the fear and the loss and the exuberance in where we are now—which I think is a really powerful thing. But I think what also comes through is you suddenly look back on your past and you realize how young you were when you did all this stuff. I mean, we were fucking kids, we didn’t have any idea at all. So something like “15 Again,” I think, it’s fabulous. It’s about that feeling when you step onto stage and you still have … the excitement and the exuberance that you get when the world is absolutely new. 

You have a lot to catch up on with your U.S. fans who haven’t seen the band in so long. How do you even pick which songs to play?

There’s part of me that wants to play lots of new stuff, because I’m just really proud of it. There’s part me that wants to play a whole load of hits, because people haven’t a chance to hear them live for 25 years. The kind of songs that get people dancing, get people crying—whatever—are the ones we’ll play. We’ve got a pretty big back catalog and we’re not frightened at chucking weird stuff in there.

San Francisco has two long-running indie nightclubs named in honor of Blur, Popscene and Leisure. If we had to rename them after two Suede songs, what would you pick?

There was a very famous nightclub in London called Trash. So you could nick that one. Maybe we could ask for something less dancy, let’s go for it! “Have You Ever Been So Low?” What I’d like is a couple of old geezers playing very sad Suede songs for people to weep into their pints.

And for Suede fans who need to catch up on the post-reunion music, what are the five key tracks they should start with?

Oh, that’s a brilliant question. I would say “Shadow Self,” “She Still Leads Me On,” “I Don’t Know How To Reach You,” “Snowblind” and “Outsiders.” … I think that would give you a fairly good idea of where we’re at.

Follow Skott Bennett at Twitter.com/skottbennett.