Suede & Manic Street Preachers – Trinity College – Live Review – 02/07/24
by Killian Laher

Interesting that these two stalwarts of nineties rock have decided to tour together, taking turns each night to headline these shows.  Today it was the turn of Manic Street Preachers to open the night, and they seemed in great form right from the start.  Clearly, they had come to entertain, playing what by and large was a greatest hits set, opening with You Love Us, Everything Must Go and Motorcycle Emptiness.  At times James Dean Bradfield struggled to hit the high notes, rendering You Stole The Sun From My Heart a little anaemic.  There was nothing wrong with his guitar playing, and the band as a unit were polished and tight.  Bradfield and bass player Nicky Wire were in reflective form, remembering their first gig in Dublin 33 years ago in the long-gone Charlie’s Bar on Aungier Street.

Without an album to promote, they powered through songs from their nineties heyday.  This Is Yesterday and Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier worked particularly well, though newer songs like To Repel Ghosts and Orwellian got little reaction from the crowd.  On the other hand, the audience lapped up A Design For Life, La Tristessa Durera and From Despair To Where, the latter dedicated to Richey Edwards.  The band was always a bit of an uneasy mix of Edwards and Wire’s punk attitude and Bradfield’s old-school rocking.  These days they are all about uplifting vibes, with Bradfield throwing in a snippet of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Today into No Surface All Feeling.  Ending with If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, they whetted the appetite for Suede.

Suede are quite a formidable live proposition and singer Brett Anderson powered onto the stage with tons of energy, opening with a muscular, rocking Turn Off Your Brain and Yell.  The set felt like a celebration of all things Suede, again leaning on the nineties for Trash and Animal Nitrate.  Anderson was a compelling presence throughout – disappearing into the audience to sing The Drowners, singing most of The 2 Of Us lying down on the stage and performing proper star jumps on most of the rest of the material.

New song Antidepressant sounds like a future Suede favourite, and they mixed songs from 2022’s Autofiction with classics New Generation and a gorgeous Saturday Night.  An acoustic version of She’s In Fashion worked surprisingly well before a triumphant So Young and Metal Mickey.  Right at the end of the gig, Brett Anderson managed to get the whole crowd to do the “la la lala lalala” part from their final song Beautiful Ones.

Though largely a night of nostalgia, it was brilliantly rendered nostalgia showing that both bands still command considerable live power.  We all watched them burn… extremely brightly!