SUEDE .

And so, from the first, spine chilling moment, when those soft, tender strings of “Sleeping Pills” sweep over the huddled, disbelieving few, to the final, tender stroke of “The Next Life”, we get 45 minutes of some of the best music ever made.

Why do bands only reach for a beer, when you could reach for the stars?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s fear of failure. But it’s better to try and make the best album in the world than face failure than not try. And Suede have never been short of ambition.

It starts all too soon. The band stroll on and without a word, it’s “So Young”. It starts so casually. Just a crash of cymbals and a 4/4 beat. But when Richard, tonight playing only 3% of his entire recorded output with Suede (that is, some three songs), brings out those chords, we know that somehow it’s different.

It’s the way it always used to be. Fast, punchy, desperate songs. Songs hopelessly in love with the world that spurned them, the way a forsaken lover always hoped to be taken back.

Upstarts. Ambitious Outsiders, desperate, hungry for the chance to prove themselves. Give me the power. I’ll make you believe.

It’s the way it always used to be. A desperate, vital band, playing their hearts out. In tiny cramped spaces. Surrounded by a chosen few devotees. And the music : big, brash, swaggering arrogant-bordering-on-hopeless anthems, such as the great stomp of “Animal Nitrate”, “Metal Mickey” and the homo-erotic “The Drowners”. Songs that not revel, but reveal, the dark world of sordid sex that is the only escape of the poor. You might not have any money – but you can always trade your body for glamour.

And so, now bolstered Alex Lee’s shimmering keyboards and precise, perfect guitar strokes, these songs sound just like they always should. Richard, freed from having to play ten guitar parts at once, can just concentrate on showing us just how good a guitarist he is. But Richard’s not a guitarist per se; he’s a musician who plays guitar. And that means that Richard knows both when to play, and when not to play. What you leave out is just as important as what you put in.

So it’s the best of all worlds. These amazing songs, played with everything you would ever hope them to be; with incredible, perfect musicianship, and passion, spirit, guts. And these amazing songs. The fabulous, dead for a decade songs such as “She’s Not Dead”, “The Next Life”, and the never-performed-ever live premiere of the tender, heartbroken, suburban “Breakdown”. As Richard takes the gentle guitar parts and tweaks out ghostly chords, Alex then adds to it with understated, tender piano that makes me realise that this is the hidden gem, slyly waiting to be discovered somewhere in the middle of the second side of the record.

Sure, there’s “Animal Lover” (during which Richard looks oddly bored), and there’s “The Next Life”. Actually, scratch what I said about “Breakdown” being the best song in the world. “The Next Life” is the best song I’ve ever heard. Hell, every Suede song sounds like the best song ever written at the precise moment of hearing it. But “The Next Life” is genius. A simple, sad lullaby about redemption, hope, and selling ice creams in Worthing, it’s the one song that makes me no longer scared of dying.

And suddenly it’s over. It’s only three-quarters of an hour. But it’s the fastest, most heart-wrenching forty five minutes I’ve ever lived. To know joy one must also know the full extent of human emotion : from the depths to the heavens.

And after this, a rapturous, heartfelt applause. And then, slowly, comes the realisation that this is not yet over. That after this, still there comes more. Again, exhumed for the first time in almost a decade, again comes the haunted “Big Time”. The song that capture, even if only for a second, the bittersweet taste of fame : the fact that fame propels you into another world, and you lose the life you used to have. And if it is worth it.

The encores cover all periods of their career : the upcoming single “Attitude”, and the swaggering, fabulous “Golden Gun” that sounds like a hit in its own right, despite being only a b-side. And that’s the thing. Suede don’t write B-Sides ; they just write songs. Some make albums, and some don’t. And to be fair, I’ve never heard a bad Suede song. Just some that are slightly less brilliant than others. And so, as the band rugby tackle “He’s Dead”, the wonderful, forgotten classic “My Insatiable One”, and the pounding, anthemic “To The Birds”, it makes me realise that Suede are that true rarity amongst bands. They don’t look for fame, or fortune, or to try and capture the mood of the times. They just do what they’ve got to do.

Suede are that rare breed. They make music because they need to. Because it’s within them, and the good will out.

So much better than almost every other band on the planet.

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