Suede – Olympia, Dublin – Live Review by Killian Laher – Photos by M Quinn

Passing the Olympia over an hour before the gig there was an old-fashioned queue waiting to see the band, the type of thing you might expect for a much younger, mainstream act. Clearly Suede’s appeal has remained undimmed by the passing of time. Flouting convention, there was no support band, rather the band played two sets, each of which turned out to be quite different. The first set was a straight play through new album Night Thoughts in sequential order, accompanied by a film directed by Roger Sargent. It was something quite novel – the band played behind a screen showing the movie but this screen became transparent intermittently, highlighting Richard Oakes’ superb guitar solo during Outsiders, or alternately highlighting singer Brett Anderson. The film worked well in that if your attention wasn’t grabbed by the music, you could watch the engaging visuals. Not that I had much of a clue what it was about, plenty of images of suicide, crime, violence, vomit, drowning and occasionally… happiness. It served as a terrific complement to the music.

Glimpsing the band through the screen, it was clear that energy levels remained high for this 20+ year old band, and they carried this through with a terrific second set, minus the screen this time, and dipping into songs from across almost every album. Oakes’ guitar was highly impressive on a rocked up Trash, Animal Nitrate and So Young. But the real star was singer Brett Anderson. Despite his 48 years, he looks every inch of what he is, a floppy haired, stick-thin rockstar. While the notion of Anderson still belting out songs like Heroine and Metal Mickey is almost ridiculous, in actuality he proved himself to an amazing frontman, completely owning the stage, overcoming chatter from the crowd during the slower songs with a high energy performance as he leapt, danced and threw himself into the crowd. The audience lapped it up, singing along enthusiastically, the response to an acoustic version of Everything Will Flow was an unexpected highlight. There were no lulls as such as the band powered through Filmstar, Beautiful Ones, rounding off with New Generation.

Who knew this band had such a fine live show in them? It would be difficult not to get carried along by the band’s enthusiasm and powerfully played songs. An early shout for gig of the year?

Set List –

1. When You Are Young
2. Outsiders
3. No Tomorrow
4. Pale Snow
5. I Don’t Know How To Reach You
6. What I’m Trying To Tell You
7. Tightrope
8. Learning To Be
9. Like Kids
10. I Can’t Give Her What She Wants
11. When You Were Young
12. The Fur and The Feathers

13. Moving
14. Trash
15. Animal Nitrate
16. Heroine
17. Filmstar
18. Sabotage
19. Down
20. So Young
21. Metal Mickey
22. Beautiful Ones
23. Everything Will Flow
24. New Generation