It starts off like Kraftwerk. It ends like Jacques Brel. And in between it becomes very Rod Stewart and oddly Ramones.

This is Head Music. Music for the head and the heart. And for the robots.

At first I realise that this is going to be the strangest album : after all, at least two thirds of these songs haven’t been played live for four years, and at least three of them have never been played live. I can’t understand why. They’re not bad songs. Just I suppose, difficult to play.

And the first sign something weird’s about to happen is when, instead of the whole band coming on stage, three shilouettes carve a space out of the smoke. They line up, one by one, behind banks of keyboards, all set facing row forward. With barely a flicker of emotion, the guy on the left presses a button and some weird mechanical beat pounds out, with only ghostly traces of wordless crooning for accompaniment.

No way this is a Suede gig, right? It’s like Kraftwerk. Right down to the regulation uniform of black shirts and bland trousers.

As Alex controls a tight, rigid beat, Richard taps out some hugely distorted, alien buzz. And then comes Brett, idly tapping out another keyboard part, intoning the words to the live premiere of “Hi-Fi” to a plainly confused huddled few.

This is not a Suede gig. I dunno what it is, but it ain’t what I would’ve ever expected from Suede. It’s weird. It’s funky. It’s machines playing people. And then, Simon comes and - in perfect sync - slaps out another beat over the top of the unstoppable rhythms. The heartbeat of the city in the night ; the pulse of the machine as it’s atomic clock marches on.

And other cliches.

As this strange, compelling experiment fades to a close, with barely a breath, like some fine-tuned machine, the band break - without sweat - into “Head Music”. At its time, this poorly understood record fell on deaf ears. But now it sounds like - revelation. Like my eyes have been opened.

Like the place where James Brown meets Kraftwerk. Awesome. Funky, raw, oozing with sleaze, pinned down to the psycho drum machine, and clever as fuck.

For the first time, of these four nights so far at the ICA, Suede aren’t just playing the album in order. But somehow, turning it inside out. So you never know what you’re going to get : and this means that a lot of people, faced with Suede’s seemingly least-popular record (in the UK at least), are lost. Gaping. Open mouthed. Slack jawed. And trying to take this weird sleek beast on board.

After “Savoir Faire” and the - always, always, always, petulant, streamlined - punk rock petulance of “Can’t Get Enough”, we get another live premiere. This time “Asbestos”. And to place songs in this context (slow/slow/fast/fast/slow) means that the audience just don’t get it.

Not because the band don’t play with passion, guts, and that mysterious X-Factor. Oh no. But because there’s no chance for the audience to feel the songs as a narrative, as a series of undulating moves. Hell that sounds so ... naff. But if you saw a gig where the crowd jump around for 3 minutes out of every 12 you’d think maybe about - I dunno - changing the order around a little.

“Electricity” and “Elephant Man” are next : both sound as biting, as vital, as the day they came out. “Electricity” - a grimy piece of suburban romance - and “Elephant Man” a big dumb rock stomp that deconstructs the entire notion of fame and fortune for the hollow sham it is. These are great, great songs : broad in vision and ambition, taking the old and making them seem new. Suede should play these songs every night. Actually come to think of it, when you’ve got no bad songs, it is difficult to choose songs to play. It’s like choosing a favourite child. I can’t decide if “The Chemistry Between Us” is a better song than “New Generation” : both are brilliant, in their own ways.

After this, its Suede mining the broken heart of “Head Music”. In quick succession, a radically reworked, gorgeous piano-led version of “Down”, followed by the sad, heart-wrenching “He’s Gone”. (I must admit to shedding a tear here, I had forgotten how raw these vignettes were - as if they have been sucked, like poison, straight out of the gaping wound of the loveless) . And then, “Indian Strings”. Vast. Sweeping. Epic. Have you seen the real you? Do you know who you really are, cossetted in a world of material comfort and privilege ; do you know what it is like when all the things that you own are removed, and you are no longer what you own, but what you feel?

You feel alone. You feel abandoned. You feel determined to survive. Somehow. Even with a great big “Crack in the Union Jack“. And I’ve never really understood what the song is about, let alone, what I think of it : some fragile fragment of a hymn about a broken sense of self, of identity, of all these things. And who knows what to feel. If you feel at all.

There is some vague memory of feeling. before sofas. before property. Before it hurt too much to feel and to trust. He’s Gone - and it feels like the words to a song.

Further messing then with a fractured chronology, comes “Everything Will Flow” and “She’s In Fashion”, Suede’s two most mellow, mainstream, relaxed recordings, ever. These songs are the sound of the summer. The sound of somewhere else. The sound of somewhere we may never have been, and we couldn’t stay. The sunshine blows our mind and the wind blows our brains.

It’s encore time. Instead of the more tradition acoustic set piece, Brett and Richard regale us with the live premiere of “God’s Gift”. The sad flipside of the night before ; the night too far when God’s Gift wakes up alone and out of love. The morning when a life of love seems better than a night spent in fear, dumping lest ye be dumped, racing through life and time and lovers as if somehow it could last forever. And we all know nothing - not even nothing - lasts forever.

“Attitude” gets better and better. This time, Simon smokes a full fag in the middle of the song. The dirty tart. Even if the song is slight, the theory of relativity applies. A slight Suede song is stronger than some bands careers.

And then - “Golden Gun”. Uncoiling like a snake poised to strike, ever burning harder, brighter, longer, with fear and passion and intensity, “Golden Gun” is the best thing I’ve heard from Suede in four years. It’s fantastic. Destined to languish in b-side obscurity, unknown except by a few, and loved dearly by the chosen few. This desperate, pounding, raw beast of a song is a classic.

Diehard fanclub nutters will go nuts as it becomes a staple of the live set ; in the meantime people who don’t - or can’t - find the single will simply look confused and wonder they can get this great song from.

In the meantime, and continuing in the Ramones vein, “Bored”. Boredom has never sounded so thrilling. A short, thrilling, wow-i-forgot-how-good-this-was , clipped rant, “Bored” pounds like an old classic. The words consist largely of “Bored? Yeah!”. If that isn’t the Ramones, nothing is.

And then, sans anything in the way of the big hits, Suede take us somewhere else. Reprising the dark half of side two of “Dog Man Star” : sure some of the songs are in slightly different places, played slightly differently. But if you couldn’t get tickets for Tuesday you got the next best thing : “Heroine” (raw, blistering, hot to the touch), “The Asphalt World” (what?! Fabulous, dark, cruel, beautiful), and the final, broken, desolate finale : “The 2 Of Us”, and a gorgeous, tender, lump in throat, tear in eye, this-is-what-makes-life-beautiful version of “Still Life”.

My. God.

Throw away your whinges and gripes. Suede don’t have anything left to prove. They never had to do anything like this. They spoil us. And we, we only ask that this isn’t the last time these gems are heard live, and we, we, only hope that this isn’t the end of the road for Suede, but some new, beautiful rebirth.

Some new morning.

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