HOW do you spell triumph again?
Suede start this gig with Still Life, one of the brooding, troubled epic ballads from their brooding, troubled, epic 1994 album Dog Man Star and halfway through singer Brett Anderson can't help but break into a grin. He spends the next hour and a half - when he isn't swinging his microphone around in a frankly dangerous manner - bouncing around like an amphetamine-fuelled Tigger, giving the distinct impression that he is loving the adulation coming towards him from a sold-out crowd.
If so, it's deserved. Suede, the reconvened 2013 version (sans Bernard Butler) may not be quite as snake-hipped as their early nineties incarnation, but this was a startling reminder of why we cared in the first place.
It possibly helps that Anderson is singing better than ever. He's stripped the fey mockney mannerisms away to leave a voice as crisp as the clean white shirt he wears. Bassist Mat Osman, meanwhile, slinks around the stage proving that male pattern baldness doesn't necessarily lower your cool quotient.
Their newer songs - Barriers and It Starts and Ends With You from latest album Bloodsports - are proof that Suede are not a heritage band just yet, but it's the back catalogue that makes them matter. Suede's original appeal was always their council estate vision of glam rock - all bitten nails, bad drugs, carpet burns and smudged mascara wielded to Mick Ronsonesque power chords. Perhaps because the band have been rather written out of the story of British pop, songs such as Animal Nitrate and The Drowners sound remarkably fresh. Or maybe it's because this band has rediscovered its original purpose. All in all, thrillingly good.
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