“We are the anti-nostalgia band otherwise known as Suede,” Brett Anderson declared to the few hundred fevered souls huddled close and tight to the purpose-built in-the-round stage at the Southbank Centre’s Clore Ballroom. Such a comment could reasonably be conceived as a sly dig at Oasis (where there’s no love lost) or the seemingly endless 90s revivalism, but Anderson was walking the walk. Having just thrillingly blitzed through their unreleased 10th album, Antidepressants, in full, the band set about playing a second set of songs comprised entirely from their post 2010-reformation. The message was clear: no shaking your bits to the hits tonight.
Anderson can afford to be so bold. If Suede’s seminal foundational hits ushered in what became known as Britpop, their abject decline and meek split to shrugged shoulders in 2003 seemed terminal. But their five comeback albums have been a rare exercise in revitalised creative excellence for an aging rock group. Autofiction, their 2022 “punk” album, was the sound of 50-something men noisily kicking back against the onset of middle age. It is an attitude that runs through the excellent, semi-accompanying Antidepressants, Suede’s distinct twist on 1980’s British post-punk and artful balladry.
The first night of Suede’s six-event takeover of the Southbank Centre, which will involve film screenings, Q&As, an off-mic concert and an orchestral performance, was rarely intimate, more of a fan club-only event than mere gig. The cordoned off foyer setting – The Clore Ballroom normally hosts talks and children’s events – gave a suitably darkened backdrop to Antidepressants, what Anderson is calling the second “black and white album” of a trilogy. “It’s nice having you nice and close like this,” Anderson said after one of his many forays into front rows on all three sides of the stage before the delicate ballad “Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star”.
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It played into the force and immediacy that underpins much of the album, which is Anderson’s reckoning with the digital onslaught of modern life and search for connectivity. Flanked by a band led expertly by guitarist Richard Oakes, the lithe, pirouetting Anderson, who at 57 must still have that portrait in his attic, came out firing for a breathless opening salvo. “Disintegrate” was a primal affront to aging (“feel the rage”); the unifying “Dancing with the Europeans” was one of those typically uplifting Suede radio hits; the album’s title track was a ferocious, tightly wound post-punk wonder, Anderson sounding slightly manic as he shrills about a medicated society. By the fourth track, the classically Suede-sounding “Sweet Kid” written about Anderson’s son, it was no surprise to see the singer’s white shirt was drenched in sweat; Anderson’s dynamic, knowing showmanship, animated by the surroundings, was as a committed as ever.
Brett Anderson was dynamic and committed (Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images)It was interesting to see how the crowd picked up on songs they’d never heard. Unabashed anthem “Broken Music for Broken People” (with Anderson battling through the crowd) and the Suede-do-Adam Ant of “Criminal Ways” won instant rapport; the gradual build of majestic ballad “June Rain” received the biggest reception, and with good cause.
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The second half plundered the dark, forceful, agitated end of Suede’s post-reformation years, an attempt to position these songs as Suede anthems in-keeping with what came before. And it worked: it was noticeable how the familiarity of 2013’s whiplashed Snowblind ratcheted up the frisson several levels; once Anderson led the audience through a singalong of 2022’s “She Still Leads Me On” a moving requiem about contemporising his love for his late mother, it didn’t feel like anything was amiss. Anderson seemed to thrive off the heightened energy. The feral “Personality Disorder”, from Autofiction, brought about the night’s first elaborate swing of the microphone lead, and for that album’s equally primitive “Shadow Self”, Anderson climbed atop the speakers excitedly.
“We’re going to take you right back now… all the way back to 2013,” Anderson teased before the stirring “It Starts and Ends with You.” While songs from their 90s imperial phase would have no doubt gone down a storm, it would have diminished the evening’s impact. Besides, those present bellowed every chorus back in any case, 2016’s rousing, closing “Outsiders” a case in point. Anti-nostalgia never sounded quite so alive.
Suede Takeover at the Southbank Centre continues on 12 September
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