Brett Anderson is a bastard. I’m sorry to be so blunt but that’s the only word for somebody who doesn’t have a single wrinkle, gray hair or excess ounce of flab to show for his 35 years on the planet (his birthday was on September 25, trivia fans). There could be an orange grove’s worth of cellulite under those skin-tight jeans of his, of course, but it’s unlikely with all that arse slapping.

But what really gets my goat is that far from treating that lithe body of his like a temple, the Suede mainman spent a goodly part of the ‘90s ingesting every noxious substance known to man. And a few that the rest of us still don’t know about.

The Class ‘A’s may have been given the heave ho, but anyone who reckons that Mr. Anderson’s joi de vivre has gone the same way obviously didn’t see him giving it socks at the hotpress Awards wrap party in Belfast. Oh, the tales I could tell but won’t ‘cause it’ll get me into ridiculous amounts of trouble.

It wasn’t all late night excess, though, with the band using the occasion to premiere their new single, ‘Positivity’. 2 minutes 45 seconds of the sweetest pop you’re going to hear this or any other year, it was the perfect riposte to those – and let’s be honest, there’s quite a few of you – who reckon that Brett & Co. are past their sell-by date.

The idea of Suede being surplus to requirements becomes even more ridiculous when you hear the rest of their A New Morning album. While nothing’s ever likely to match the alchemic brilliance of their 1993 Suede debut, the likes of ‘One Hit To The Body’ and ‘Street Life’, with its “The sound that comes from underground/that’s got you clapping/got you shaking your ears” refrain, come damn close. Add in the laconic ‘Untitled…Morning’, stomping ‘Beautiful Loser’ and über-camp ‘Lonely Girls’, and you’re talking about a record that’s worthy of just as much attention as the Coldsailors and Starheads of this world.

Not one for false modesty, Anderson accepts the praise as a statement of fact.

“We actually made the record once, scrapped it and started again,” he says in his trademark Home Counties drawl. “We made two albums – one was shit, the other’s great.”

Just how big a pile of effluent was the Mk. 1 A New Morning?

“A large one,” bassist Mat Osman laughs. “The approach was totally wrong. We went in with a guy called Tony Hoffer, who’s lovely and everything, but we didn’t get the sound we were after and thought, ‘Right, back to the drawing-board.’”

Which had Stephen “The Smiths” Street’s name written on it.

“After two-and-a-half-years of writing hundreds of songs and travelling in loads of different directions, losing a member and gaining a member, we went in and did it all in eight weeks,” Osman continues. “We started every day at 11am and didn’t leave until one o’clock the following morning.

“We played everything really live. The last album, Head Music, was done the opposite way. We wrote a lot of it live and then, well, took it apart. Bits of it were actually done by post – no, seriously! Neil (Codling) wasn’t very well at the time, so he’d bike parts over for us to work on.”

“Head Music was basically an exercise in how not to make a Suede record,” Anderson grimaces. “This, on the other hand, was us putting all the right pieces back together again and doing what we do best. We wrote a hell of a lot of songs and narrowed it down to ten great ones. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything that’s so choc-full of good stuff. There’s no filler. I did this thing of disappearing off into the country to write, and then came back to London to work with the band.”

What makes Brett Anderson’s creative juices flow the fastest – being in a good mood or a right old strop?

“I used to think that whole teenage angst thing fueled creativity, but now I reckon it inhibits it. I like being in the right mood and generally connecting with the vibe, which sounds very mystical but is actually about the mental space you’re in.”

Given Anderson’s assertion that he finds it “all consuming”, does his personality change when he’s writing?

“If he is Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, we don’t get to see it ‘cause he locks himself away,” Osman proffers. “I don’t know whether he writes song (contorts his face) going ‘aaaarrrrrgh!’ or in a Zen-like state of contentment.”

Having helped to write two of the tunes on A New Morning, keyboard-player Neil Codling left the Suede ranks 14 months ago citing “illness.” Which as anybody who’s followed the career of Shaun Ryder/Shane MacGowan/Evan Dando/Cerys Matthews/Marti Pellow knows, is one of the oldest rock ‘n’ roll euphemisms in the book.

“Everybody thought, ‘Suede, somebody’s ill…oh, drug addiction!’” Anderson resumes. “It was very frustrating ‘cause he actually has M.E. It’s given the man this rock ‘n’ roll reputation when, in fact, he lives on brown rice and minerals. Honestly he’s obsessed with his health!

“It didn’t just happen one day. He’d been ill for a long time, missed out on a lot of stuff like touring and said, ‘Look, I can tell I’m not going to make it through another album.’’ His doctor agreed, so he left.”

Suede are very much from the Primal Scream School in that no matter how ripped they were during the ‘90s, they never missed a gig or projectile vomited during the encore.

“The funny thing is that we were always quite monastic about the shows,” Brett continues. “There was a straight-edge thing going on, a rule that we’d never do anything before a gig. Afterwards, as soon as we came off stage, yeah.”

“It’s weird being at a festival,” Osman reflects, “and knowing that you’re the only five people there who aren’t out of their minds! Going on stage is too important to fuck up. We didn’t want to become Shane MacGowan.”

Do Suede find the thought of competing with young guns like The Strokes and White Stripes daunting, or is it a case of, “Right, let’s show ‘em how it’s fucking done”?

“Personally, I’ve got to a stage in my life where I can’t go chasing things like that,” Anderson confides. “For better or worse, the notion of trying to fit in is behind us. Some people might see that as a bad attitude, but I feel much more comfortable with that. We’ve made a record that I’m proud of and, ultimately, really comfortable with. It’s not an ill-fitting suit of clothes, it’s very natural and tied up with how I perceive our position in the whole scene. I care much less about how we’re perceived than I ever have done. I don’t feel the need to fit Suede into some current fashion.”

It depends what side of the techno fence you’re standing on, of course, but I’ve always rather admired Suede for not trying to tart their sound up with rappers and superfluous beats. Which explains why A New Morning could’ve been recorded at pretty much any point over the last 30 years.

“I can’t take people who self-consciously reinvent themselves seriously. They’re so laughable and transparent. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I was doing the clownish things that some of these bands get upto.”

“Even if we sat down tomorrow and said, ‘Right, we’re doing a reggae album’, it’d end up sounding pretty much the same. We get criticism for it – in and outside of our organisation – but I’ve always tried to make music that I feel comfortable with.”

So they’ve never been tempted to grow smigs, pierce their nipples and trundle round the place on skateboards?

“I heard that new P.O.D. single today which I really liked,” Brett offers by way of compensation. “It’s horses for courses. They’re very good at being loud and having bits of metal in their face, whereas our talents lie elsewhere.”

Yes, I can’t imagine anybody in a band whose initials stand for Payable On Death ‘fessing up to being “a bisexual man who’s never had a homosexual experience.” Sticking with matters metal for a moment – if Brett decided to do an Ozzy, what would The Andersons be like?

“They’d be a family of depressed sex maniacs, crying and wanking all the time. No, I’d be far too boring. I still have my moments but they’re fewer and farther than they used to be.”

Beefcake Californian metallers aside, what bands have tickled the Suede fancy of late?

“The last really exciting, fresh album I heard was The Streets. It was touted as a garage record, but in reality it’s, well, messy and scuffed. Community Music by Asian Dub Foundation was really good and, though I haven’t heard it yet, I’m told the new Cornershop one’s excellent too.”

Given the bands they’re listening to – and the multiracial city they’re living in – they must absorb the odd extraneous influence.

“Absolutely,” Osman acknowledges. “On Head Music for instance, a lot of the samples were these wailing Eastern sounding strings, which is a common sound anywhere there’s a bunch of Indian kids. Britpop sounded the way it did not because it was particularly white, but because it was backward looking. Now that things are a little bit more ‘of the minute’, you’re getting a far wider range of influences. Which is healthy.”

While not exactly the “British invasion” of old, the last few years have seen Oasis, Coldplay, Radiohead, and Gorillaz shifting serious units on the other side of the Atlantic. Has that put renewed fire in Suede’s belly, or have they given up on America?

“Pretty much so, to be honest,” Brett admits. “Our problem over there is we lost our name. I didn’t want to tour as ‘The London Suede’ or put in the sort of work you have to if you want to break there.”

“U2 are a case in point,” Osman takes-over. “They just went out there. If you want it enough, good on you, but I don’t think we can be bothered.”

Does this reluctance to go back to the States have anything to do with a lowly support act called the Cranberries blowing them off stage when they toured there together in 1993?

“I tell you what happened - everybody used to leave after their single. They learned really quickly to play it at the end! I’ve never seen anything like it, it was so strange. The crowd would cheer for ‘Linger’, the band would duly oblige and then there’d be a stampede for the exit. For a while, opening for Suede was a guarantee of American success. On the first tour Counting Crows supported us, then the Cranberries…”

A lot of people thought it was cynical – more from his point of view than theirs – when David Bowie did that NME interview and photo-shoot with Suede. Has the friendship endured, or is Jonesy too busy hanging out with Moby?

“We don’t phone each other up or anything like that but, yeah, we see each other at festivals and things,” Anderson proffers. “He’s an incredibly friendly and positive person.”

Who, apropos what we talked of earlier, must’ve at this stage have had at least 20 different personas.

“A solo artist doesn’t have the same sort of baggage that a band does. When a band reinvent themselves or, worse still, get a stylist in it looks like they’ve been dressed by their mum. The other thing that struck me about Bowie is that he always believed it. However unlikely it was that David Jones from Beckenham should become an American soul singer, he was that person.”

Is Suede’s disdain for the stylist profession based on personal experience, or merely loathing from afar?

“The couple of times we’ve done it they’ve turned up with silver shirts and a feather boa. Surprisingly some coke-addled fashion person has a worse idea of what you should wear than yourself.

“Actually, no, I’m not surprised. The level of stupidity in this industry knows no bounds. The most important thing we’ve learned over the past 10 years is how to steer clear of the arseholes. That’s the key to happiness and success!”