Suede
York Barbican
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

“Welcome to Suede World,” announces Brett Anderson, arms flung wide. It’s a world of beautiful ones. Insatiable ones. Wild ones. It’s a world where people with “tasteless bracelets” and “electric-shock-bog-brush-hair” can find their tribe.

This celebration of the underdog has always been the band’s weapon. And now, more than a decade into their second act, they’ve cemented their position as eternal outsiders. The audience may no longer be “so young, so gone” but their set has the teenage rush of falling in love with music — and life’s endless possibilities — all over again.

The band has always excelled as a live act and it’s in this context that their last two releases make the most sense: the punk energy of Autofiction and post-punk darkness of last year’s Antidepressants. The albums more than demonstrate Anderson’s claim that they’re “anti-nostalgia,” pushing their music to raw extremes that make them sound like a band reborn.

If any doubt about their continued relevance was left, it’s blown away by opening track Disintegrate. Taken from their latest release, Simon Gilbert’s thunderous drums and Richard Oakes’s goth-tinged guitar are as thrilling as anything they’ve released since they emerged in 1992. The track has the same urgency as New Generation but rather than celebrating youthful glamour, it embraces mortality and modern anxiety.

Their willingness to exist in the present, with all the confusion and fear of middle age, has an admirable authenticity. These late period tracks — described as “broken music for broken people” – variously address Anderson’s late mother (She Still Leads Me On), finding connection in a broken world (Dancing With The Europeans), and mental health (June Rain).

The pace rarely drops during the 21-song set, with the new material being received almost as rapturously as Metal Mickey and Trash, which date from their commercial heyday. Often more full-bodied than their studio recordings, these older tracks have a muscle that makes them feel of a piece with the band’s latest direction.

Throughout it all Anderson remains a magnetic frontman, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with the energy of someone half his age. He’s also lost none of his range. He may adopt a kind of sprechgesang on some of the newer material but on The Living Dead, performed with just Neil Codling on keys, his voice carries to the very back of the venue, despite singing off mic.

They end the set with the melancholic romance of Saturday Night, a sweat-drenched Anderson telling the audience that it’s “time to leave Suede World. Some of you will be reluctant to leave. Some of you will be curious. Some of you will want to come back.” The crowd response suggests that the latter is very much the preferred option.

On tour in the UK until February 21. For dates and tickets see: suede.co.uk