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Neil Ainger enjoys in a show from the indie rock icons which confidently sets their new material front and centre
Image by Neil Ainger
It feels like a lifetime ago that Suede split, following a commercial and creative downturn. After four smash hit and critically acclaimed albums, the cracks started to appear with 1999’s Head Music and then 2002’s A New Morning tanked. They wouldn’t return for seven years, and when they did eventually re-emerge their career resurgence has been extraordinary. Each record that has been released since their reunion in 2010 has been well received and has placed in the top 10 in the UK, with the band’s two most recent releases, 2022’s Autofiction and 2025’s Antidepressants, charting at #2.
It is oh so common for bands to rely on former glories. It’s hard to really judge or criticise a band for it either. There is a huge market for 80s and 90s nostalgia and there’s money to be made for heritage acts to continue to tour and play the songs everyone remembers and wants to hear. They may record a new album every few years, because why not? The fans may buy it, because why not? But the fans don’t really want to hear the songs, because it gets in the way of the nostalgia, and the band don’t really want to play them, because their heart was never really in it when they wrote and recorded them. They simply become pieces of merchandise like a t-shirt or a poster. Oasis just smashed all manner of records for live attendances during their 2025 reunion tour. Fans bought tickets in their millions. Will there be a new record? Maybe. Does there have to be? Absolutely not. There is far much more money to be made in nostalgia than there is in a new album that only a fraction of those fans would have any interest in.
My hat is off therefore to Suede. They could have gone that same route. They wouldn’t have made the kind of money Oasis did, but they could have worked for the healthy payday and soaked up the adoration of a fanbase that missed them and then called it quits again and everyone would have had a good time. It is clear however from the first three songs of this evening’s show – Disintegrate, Dancing With The Europeans and Antidepressants, all from their latest album – that they are here to back themselves and their new material. Each song is well received, the fans know all of the words and sing them back to the band. The record may only be a few months old but it already holds a place firmly in people’s hearts. In fact, by the end of the evening, almost 50% of the setlist is comprised of songs from the band’s two most recent albums.
Trance State is met with the kind of rapturous applause that suggests it will become embedded in setlists for years to come. Turn off Your Brain and Yell is already a fan favourite and, if it wasn’t for the inclusion of a beautiful rendition of Saturday Night on a Saturday Night in Newcastle, The Only Way I Can Love You from Autofiction would have actually been the final song of the night, trusted to close the set down. Of course there is also a healthy dose of hit singles from the bands heyday, such as Filmstar, The Beautiful Ones, Trash, Animal Nitrate and Metal Mickey. There’s even a tour debut of the non-album single Stay Together from 1993. But the highlights of the set remain the newer material and the faith the band are willing to place in it to showcase it so prominently.
For a band that lost their focus so much at one time that they could no longer see the next step forward, Suede are now charging ahead with song after song and album after album. Rejuvenated, re-energised and breaking through ceiling after ceiling with the strength and the reach of each new brilliant album. Wherever they go from here, whenever that is, and whatever it looks like, I’ll damn sure be here for it and I have a feeling that they haven’t hit the heights they are truly capable of just yet. A heritage act they most certainly are not.
