Suede delivered a stunning multi-media performance at their NME Awards With Austin Texas show at the Forum last night (February 12), featuring a full run through their recent Top Ten album ‘Night Thoughts’ and a second set of classics and rarities.
As at their smattering of shows to preview the album last year, the NME Godlike Geniuses of 2015 performed the entirety of ‘Night Thoughts’ from behind a screen showing the accompanying film by director Roger Sargent. The moving and disturbing film treats each song as a memory of a drowning man, including scenes of attempted suicide, kidnap and sniper attacks. Climaxing with the stately ‘The Fur And The Feathers’, the film section of the show received a standing ovation.
For the second half the screen was removed and an impassioned Suede opened their electrifying ‘Hits And Treats’ set with ‘This Hollywood Life’ and popular b-side ‘Killing Of A Flashboy’. A flurry of major hits including ‘Trash’ and ‘Animal Nitrate’ gave way to more obscure fan favourites – singer Brett Anderson declared “we first played this place in 1992 and we probably played this song” as introduction to ‘Pantomime Horse’ from their self-titled debut album, and dedicated a stark acoustic ‘High Rising’, the b-side to ‘So Young’, to the fans that had followed them around Europe on their current tour.
Having chastised anyone talking during the song, saying “you can listen or you can sing along but I don’t want you talking”, Anderson then told the crowd “now you can make some fucking noise,” he said as the song finished and ‘For The Strangers’ struck up, Anderson’s cue to roam out into the crowd. After energetic stampedes through ‘So Young’ and ‘Metal Mickey’, Brett reminisced about playing the nearby Bull & Gate venue in 1990, claiming “a guy called Chris was the only person in London who’d put us on” before closing the main set with ‘The Beautiful Ones’.
Returning for an encore, Anderson praised the crowd for their singing, “although some people don’t know the difference between singing and talking”, and then introduced ‘Everything Will Flow’, from 1999’s ‘Head Music’, as “a good song from a bad album”. A rare performance of rousing early b-side ‘To The Birds’ and a final ‘New Generation’ rounded out the show.
Suede played
When You Are Young
Outsiders
No Tomorrow
Pale Snow
I Don’t Know How to Reach You
What I’m Trying to Tell You
Tightrope
Learning to Be
Like Kids
I Can’t Give Her What She Wants
When You Were Young
The Fur and the Feathers
This Hollywood Life
Killing of a Flashboy
Trash
Animal Nitrate
Heroine
Filmstar
Pantomime Horse
High Rising
(acoustic)
For the Strangers
So Young
Metal Mickey
Beautiful Ones
Everything Will Flow
(acoustic)
To the Birds
New Generation