Both Suede and Manic Street Preachers are legends in their own right, each contributing in a very special way to the unique fabric of British guitar music. Motorpoint Arena was blessed with both bands on one bill, for an evening of nostalgia, indulgence and inspiration...
We are Manic Street Preachers and you are watching us in our 4th decade,” James Dean Bradfield (or ‘JDB’, as per his insistence) says to the heaving crowd at the Motorpoint Arena, part way through their set. It’s at once logical yet startling.
Logical, as both Manics and Suede - their partners on this co-headline tour - have firmly established themselves as part of the great fabric of British musical culture by now, their songs threaded through the tapestry of musical touchstones, their influence still echoing in today’s bands. Startling, as their vintage is so belied tonight by both bands’ effervescence and clear love of practising their art, that it’s hard to believe they’ve been around for so many years.
Sons of Cymru and princes of politically tinged indie, Manic Street Preachers have endured by virtue of the kind of dogged, heartfelt commitment that also pervades their music. It also probably helps that they are one hell of a live band.
Beginning with Motorcycle Emptiness, they burst into life from the first second, the crowd rising to meet them well in time for the first of many, many full-throated choruses tonight. His voice undiminished by the decades, JDB’s vocals showcase a remarkable and perhaps sometimes overlooked versatility, his yearning yelps sounding as youthful as they did on record way back when.
The sound is clean, every gutsy note of the guitar as clear as a bell as he wrings those iconic riffs out of the neck of it. Beside him, the shaded, suited Nicky Wire stands, meaty bass punching out of the speakers as somewhere a portrait of him ages.
Everything Must Go sounds just as good, and the energy it seems is here to stay. Barely seconds pass between songs before another classic is played. You Stole the Sun From My Heart still sears with the pain of rejection, Your Love Alone is Not Enough remains impossibly catchy as it bounces along. A Design for Life is still a showcase of how deftly Manics can deploy light and shade in their music.
The most heartening thing about both sets this evening is just how much these lads love playing. A guitar malfunction during Ocean Spray is laughed off, even as it escalates. Wire brings his eternal personality to bear, showering the stage with confetti and seemingly taking infinite joy in watching his band mates play.
As they thunder toward the end of their set, you could be forgiven for imagining them continuing for another four decades. That ending comes in the form of If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, a song unnerving in its own continuing relevance, as though it were written with remarkable prescience. Of course it’s epic. Of course it prompts the biggest singalong so far.
Suede pick up with consummate ease where Manics left off. Brett Anderson’s outfit are no strangers to relevance, given their importance to the emergence of what would become Britpop and their influence on generations of artists swayed by the sleazy yet glamourous sonic world they inhabit.
They thunder into their set with Disintegrate, their guitars a little wilder, their soundscape a little more roiling than Manics’. Anderson is already goading the crowd, cavorting, connecting. Since their revival in 2013 with Bloodsports, Suede have regained their reputation as a ferociously engaging live band and that’s evident with every song tonight.
A snarling Trash and a muscular Animal Nitrate are almost confrontational when set against the previous set, but as the set rolls on it’s clear that beneath the brashness, Anderson is as much a lover as he is a fighter. He asks for Nottingham’s hands, he repeats the importance of live music and the connection built by a crowd singing together. He walks into the crowd, surrounding himself with that connection, reciprocating. He grins the whole time.
Underpinned by Mat Osman’s metronomic basswork, the raucous, squalling guitars envelop the crowd in a textural soundscape, the sound cohesive even as they play songs spanning the band’s long history.
By the time they reach their finale - a dizzying one-two of Metal Mickey and Beautiful Ones, Anderson remains as energetic as he was an hour before, his grin undimmed as they head onward to the final night of the tour.
Relevance can be a cursed term in music, an industry that is always hunting for the new, the young, always rumbling onward. It can hang like a sword of Damocles over a band, threatening at any point to leave them behind to be forgotten by the collective conscience as that search rolls on.
That both bands tonight are here, playing our arena as part of a massive tour is testament to how impactful their songs have been, how they’ve indelibly dyed their notes onto those threads. It also suggests that relevance is just as much about the connection made between artist and fan as anything the industry decides. That decades passing only strengthen that link and the relevance as these songs that are so much a part of us, stay with us. Long may these bands remain relevant.
Suede and Manic Street Preachers performed at Motorpoint Arena on 11 November 2026
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