Suede – Southampton Guildhall, March 2023
Whether you bought into it the first time around or not, for those of us in our mid-40s the height of Britpop was our generation’s music. The endless debate over being a Blur or Oasis fan, along with the likes of Sleeper, Elastica and Menswear remaining popular among students on the dancefloor at mid-week club nights.
Yet slightly ahead of the curve were Suede, their initial 1993 self-titled album possibly where the whole Britpop thing started. They may have initially broken onto the scene the same time as Pulp, but it was Suede’s debut that caught the eye of the masses.
As such, while tonight was very much about promoting the new album, there was no chance of ignoring those early hits.
Sure enough, a one two of “Animal Nitrate” and “Trash” would go down well early on in the set, despite the slightly dubious sound that always seems to hinder gigs at Southampton Guildhall.
Autoficton – Indie Lovies to Rock n Roll Stars
Last year at Victorious Festival, Suede had come across as one of the weekends’ most rock n roll bands. With a live energy that maybe I’d not quite been expecting from our indie lovies. Yet this is partly down to their latest release “Autofiction” taking the group in a chaotic and even less mainstream direction. As result, it seems to have rubbed off on the older tracks too. “We are the Pigs” in particular spat out with even more angst than when it was first released.
All the while frontman Brett Anderson gradually fast becoming the sweatiest singer imaginable. Continuously working the crowd throughout the set, you could easily forget the rest of his bandmates even existed – let alone the fact they too have mostly been in Suede since the early days.
This was very much the Brett Anderson show, even down to performing a solo acoustic version of “the Wild Ones”. It became a rather poignant moment, albeit not distracting from the fact too many people were heading to and from the bar.
After a couple more classics and a short break, the Encore simply consisted of “Beautiful Ones”. During which, you only needed to take a look around Southampton Guildhall to see the crowd clearly loved it as much as Suede’s forever-engaging singer… although that shirt of his could probably do with a wash.
Last year’s album “Autofiction” is out now, available on Vinyl and CD.
