It may have been Fresher’s week in Nottingham, but the biggest crowd last week was hanging around Rough Trade for a special acoustic set by Suede, in promotion of their latest album, The Blue Hour.
By 8.30pm, the queue for signings is backed up to Hartleys on the corner. Clearly Suede have lost none of their star power.
Suede’s third album, Coming Up, came out at the time of Britpop, and being a British indie band, they, were often lumped into the movement, occupying an uneasy place in the Union-Jack-celebrating, New Labour lad culture of the period. But Suede were always more suited to the fringes, where traditional masculinity was challenged by beautiful men defying gender stereotypes. They were the band for the outcasts, the queer kids, the queens and the desperate dreamers.
They began their set with material from The Blue Hour, beginning with Wastelands. It’s an acoustic set tonight, so the line-up is just Brett Anderson backed up by guitarists Richard Oakes and Neil Codling. Songwise, there’s nothing that deviates hugely from past musical offerings, but perhaps that’s part of the draw; there’s a comforting familiarity in the lush, soaring guitars and the swooping emotion of Anderson’s vocals. Anderson still has that laid-back, shabby charisma that evokes the faded urban glamour and hopelessness of Suede’s sound, and his voice is just as clear and pure live as it ever was.
After a few new ones, we flash back to Everything Must Flow from 1999’s Head Music and then further back with to Coming Up, with a more mellow version of Trash that immediately cements the crowd’s nostalgic adoration. Anderson seems to relax into the music, and starts bantering with the crowd, playfully whistling and dancing through these classics, before finishing with a stunning rendition of the latest single, Life is Golden.
It’s a short set in a small space, but there’s magic in seeing such an established band do what they do best up close.
Suede were at Rough Trade on Wednesday 26 September.
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