Suede and Manic Street Preachers, Glasgow review: 'a trip down memory lane'
They may have spent much of this show revisiting their 90s heyday, but Suede and the Manics are also forging confidently into the future, writes Jay Richardson
Suede and Manic Street Preachers, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★
Cramming two of the biggest guitar bands of the 90s into a double-header arenas tour, as Suede and Manic Street Preachers have capably done over the last few years, acknowledges their status as elder statesmen of literate indie but also affords the shows a brisk, no-nonsense punchiness, with both splashing their more evocative, sloganeering lyrics in bold type across their dramatic set visuals.
The Manics literally ran on stage and barrelled straight into the keening riff of Motorcycle Emptiness, its punky snarl undiminished. As Suede frontman Brett Anderson later acknowledged, no-one wants to be defined by nostalgia but it's nice to “indulge” every once in a while. The Welsh group bookended their set with mainstays from their brash debut album Generation Terrorists, with the gloriously upstart You Love Us succeeded by If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next, its Spanish Civil War-era foreboding spikily relevant to the current far-right resurgence.
Frontman James Dean Bradfield spared little flattery name-checking eighties Glasgow bands such as Orange Juice, Altered Images and Simple Minds, albeit rather bewilderingly in the build-up to stately rocker The Everlasting. And the highlight of their set was him sweetly crooning Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart in tribute to the late singer, before soaring into No Surface All Feeling, his rich, throaty and impassioned vocals resounding like the bellow of a wounded ox.
Anderson was a slinkier presence, embracing crowd members, wanly prostrating himself on the stage reciting Christina Rossetti's “When I am dead ...” on The 2 of Us, and on all fours for the brutally irresistible double of Animal Nitrate and We Are The Pigs.
My City, here receiving its world debut, is a bittersweet snatch of civic pride bordering on the optimistic, while new-ish number Still Leads Me On is a gorgeous, mainstream love song for a mother, never mawkish in its sentimentality. This was a trip down memory lane, sure, but these two bands are also forging confidently into the future.
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