“I am a selection of dismantled almosts” reads the Anne Sexton quote emblazoned across screens erected in a glade beneath the imposing frontage of Alexandra Palace as Manic Street Preachers take the stage, exposing perhaps one of the unspoken stigmas of the co-headline tour. As much as they can be blockbuster money-spinners – Elton duelling pianos with Billy Joel; Jay-Z and Beyoncé cashing in on the world’s most famous marriage – they can also act as a means to muster joint fanbases for acts that only scraped the stadium league by themselves.
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Nothing feels “almost” about the Manics and Suede’s joint tour, mind. Both of these iconic ’90s bands – swapping the headline spot and playing a tight 75 minutes apiece – are back in the ascendent. The Welsh rock insurrectionists bagged their first UK No 1 album since 1998 with 2021’s The Ultra Vivid Lament, while London’s suave indie sleaze originators are riding high on acclaim for 2022’s raw-edged Autofiction album. This joint tour, begun in North America in 2022 and revived for the UK this summer, is no Britpop cash-in charabanc – both bands would balk at the tag anyway. It’s simply an uncynical celebration of some of the most euphoric and exciting music the ’90s ever produced.
It feels bizarre to hear era-defining showstoppers like “You Love Us”, “Everything Must Go” and “Motorcycle Emptiness” knocked out in quick succession not long past seven o’clock. But such is the hit-heavy nature of such occasions. Recent Manics albums have ventured into chamber rock grace (2013’s Rewind The Film) and grief-stricken bombast (The Ultra Vivid Lament) but, drawing the first-on straw, they swerve such indulgences to go in two-footed on their formidable singles catalogue.
It’s difficult to imagine a finer, better-balanced Manics set. Their glory punk early era (“From Despair To Where”, “Little Baby Nothing” with a pink-clad The Anchoress taking Traci Lords’ defiant part) merges masterfully with the mid-period grandeur of “A Design For Life” and “No Surface All Feeling”, adorned with a snippet of Smashing Pumpkins‘ “Today” as if in honour of another recent alt-rock double header, Pumpkins versus Weezer.
When they dip into relative rarity, it’s only to pluck out refined treats: the sumptuous glide rock of “This Is Yesterday” or the polka-infused “Walk Me To The Bridge”. They’re battling a soundsystem so weedy it makes All Points East sound like AC/DC, rendering “Orwellian” and “To Repel Ghosts” airy, incorporeal affairs. But with Nicky Wire glamorously high-kicking his way through “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough” and James Dean Bradfield spinning on the spot through his quicksilver solos, they’re a god-tier band at any volume.
“Enjoy Suede, they’re gonna give you hell,” declares a departing Bradfield. And they do. Bold behind their readjusted critical armours, Brett Anderson’s black-clad rock Baudelaires open with the adrenalised noir of Autofiction track “Turn Off Your Brain And Yell” and chance several more of the record’s motorik rock moments in “Shadow Self” and “She Still Leads Me On”, a roaring tribute to Anderson’s late mother.
“We Are The Pigs” gets a new metal intro and they even dare a brand-new track, Anderson adopting a Lydon snarl for the punkish “Antidepressants”. But every corner of their music, draped with Anderson’s salacious melodies and Richard Oakes’ cumulonimbus atmospheres, is inherently magnificent, and Anderson has aged into a transfixing onstage beast.
He’s never been more Bowie than when straddling “New Generation” tonight, more celebratory than during a full-throated “Trash” or leaping into the crowd for “The Drowners”, or more heartfelt than when spilling gigantic torch songs like “Still Life”, “The Wild Ones” and “Saturday Night” down the hill to encompass all the seedy romances of North London. A life-affirming night.
Suede setlist
Turn Off Your Brain And Yell
Trash
Animal Nitrate
The Drowners
We Are The Pigs
The Only Way I Can Love You
Still Life
New Generation
Filmstar
Antidepressants
Saturday Night
She Still Leads Me On
Shadow Self
The Wild Ones
So Young
Metal Mickey
Beautiful Ones
Manic Street Preachers setlist
You Love Us
Everything Must Go
Motorcycle Emptiness
This Is Yesterday
You Stole The Sun From My Heart
To Repel Ghosts
Little Baby Nothing
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier
A Design For Life
La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)
Walk Me To The Bridge
Kevin Carter
Orwellian
From Despair To Where
No Surface All Feeling
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next