WE want to make the first proper, post break-up record.”

Suede, the darlings of Britpop, are back, older, but no less ambitious and sure of themselves.

Bassist Mat Osman is talking about Bloodsports, the band’s new album, and it’s clear the brother of early evening quiz show favourite Richard Osman believes it would be Pointless for a band of Suede’s standing to return with anything make-do.

He won’t mention any names, but he questions the motives of many of the major-name bands coaxed back out of retirement for another money-spinning album and tour.

He says: “Can you name me any band which has come out of retirement with an album anything like as good as its earlier ones?”

It is a struggle and Matt doesn’t have much time for the bands gilding their comeback tours with bells and whistles.

He says: “I see other bands come back with a full orchestra behind them. It just puts a sheet of glass between you and the audience.

“Suede have always loved to feed off the audience. It makes the show as live as possible. We love that feeling of danger, where there’s no safety net.”

It was that reconnection between the band and their audience in a live show at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust in 2010 which began thoughts of a full return.

Mat says: “Fifteen minutes into the show, we all thought we’ve got to do this again.”

So there were more shows, all treated with the same clamour from fans, but the band were keen their return was going to be more than an exercise in nostalgia.

Mat says: “I have an absolute fear of nostalgia. When we were choosing tracks to play at these shows we’d ask ourselves, ‘What are the songs the people love?’ “It starting nagging at us that we should write some more songs. We wrote 40 or 50 new songs and started trying them out at the shows.

“That’s why it took so long to come back with Bloodsports. We saw these reformed bands coming back with this half-hearted collection of songs. There was no way we were going to do that.”

Mat says songs from the new album will provide a “huge chunk” of the set-list on the band’s upcoming UK tour, which includes a night in Southend at the Cliffs Pavilion on October 23.

Those new songs are sure to impress Suede fans who have been there from the start, as the album is packed with the band’s trademark glam rock and singer Brett Anderson’s soaring vocals.

But Mat says the recent shows have shown the band now have fans barely born when early classic albums such as Suede and Dog Man Star were released.

Mat says: “We were all surprised at the new audience at the comeback shows, as we had all but disappeared in those eight years.

“These people had found our songs for themselves on YouTube.

“We recently played to 5,000 people in Chile. They knew every song!”

The fans may still be young, but band members Mat, Brett and drummer Simon Gilbert are now in their mid-forties. Can they still play songs about elegantly wasted youth and druggy decadence with any conviction?

Mat is adamant the band can still be taken over by the passion and exuberance of their music on stage, but are a more focused unit now.

He says: “Tours are not just a two-month party anymore.

“But it’s an unbelievable feeling to play live. None of us have ever done anything else. It is a ridiculous privilege.

“When we started we went slightly mad. We just staggered from stage to stage on tour, but you have to be 25 to do that.

“The challenge for us was to make a record that has exuberance and joy when it’s about a middle-aged life. Where do you get those passions?”

If not everyone likes the new record, Mat won’t be bothered. He believes Suede’s music has always been something you either love or hate, as any great music should be.

He says: “It is impossible to be really popular unless you are also disliked. For those people who like us, we’re their favourite band.

“We engender strong emotions, because our music is so dramatic. With Brett’s voice, we were never going to sound like anyone else.”

Suede have always upset as many as have loved them. Even though they were considered one of the founding bands of Britpop at the end of the Eighties, their androgyny and flamboyance seemed out of the step with the laddish direction the movement went in.

Their antipathy towards Britpop seemed to be most concentrated against Colchester band Blur. There was the matter of founding member Justine Frischmann and one-time girlfriend of Brett, going on to date Blur frontman Damon Albarn, but the bands rarely missed an opportunity to criticise each other in the music press, which hung on their every words at that time.

Mat now seems to have a grudging respect for any band that survived the madness of that time.

He says: “Britpop was a very strange experience. We were on the front pages of all the music magazines. None of us had money, none of us had ever been abroad. No one had ever listened to anything we had to say before. We went slightly mad.

“With Blur, we all lived about 15 minutes from each other in North London. We all went to the same pubs.

“It reminded me of those far-left groups such as the Socialist Workers’ Party who seem to reserve their bitterest ire for the people who are most like them.

“It was a pressure cooker, a very tribal atmosphere. To be honest, anybody who has made it through those times who’s not a terrible p***k or dead gets my respect.”

Suede
Cliffs Pavilion, Station Road,
Westcliff. October 23, 7pm.
Tickets, £29.15-£30.95
01702 351135