2011年 09月 23日 金曜日 16:27

Sat 21 May – Suede perform Coming Up

Each of these trio of gigs have been special in their own way and tonight is perhaps the most fun and entertaining. This is partly because Coming Up is Suede’s “pop” album; brilliant, effervescent, fluorescent and fizzy as sherbet. It’s also the easiest album to dance to and there is much crowd participation especially in the stalls. Plus this is the one that the band themselves are clearly the most comfortable playing, no doubt because of the three, this is the only one Richard Oakes and Neil Codling helped to co-write.
It’s a hit-studded evening of course, with the glittering clarion call of Trash kicking things off to the best possible start; such a sweet, romantic song but in an unexpected, fresh way. Every song sounds like a hit, even the ones that weren’t released as singles such as the gloriously atmospheric She and the sublime The Chemistry Between Us. It is, I think the band’s most under rated album and unfairly so.

Europe Is Our Playground was a thrilling encore, followed with a poignant This Time. My one criticism was that the remainder of the encores were a little underwhelming. Young Men and Together were disappointing choices, given how many great B-sides Suede have at their disposal and the other songs were singles I’ve already seen on previous nights. But really this is only a small point, because it would be churlish to complain after seeing such three great albums performed by this wonderful band. This could have been a nostalgia-fest, but it didn’t seem like that; these were timeless songs which still sound incredibly moving and vital. At the end of the evening Brett drums his fist against his heart. Right back at ya!