A contender for concert of the year, and possibly the best show of Brett's life so far.

For years, people thought of Brett Anderson as the slightly fey lead singer in Suede, a bottom spanking drug fuelled runt trying desperately to escape the Asda Towns of Heathrow and Hounslow. What nobody realised is that, under the swirling dervish of head music and animal nitrate, under the glam guitars and the litter on the breeze, was that Brett Anderson was a modern torch singer.

Tonight, his first full acoustic performance of his life, recasts Brett as what he always wanted to be : a crooner. Taking to the role like a duck to water, Brett matches material from his debut solo album (a lush collection of plaintive melodies that seem, if anything, to become even more vital in their reduced state) alongside Suede classics to create a compelling and bold artistic vision.

Opening with solo single "Love Is Dead", the air in the room is rarified. Then again, one would expect a near reverence in a chapel. Aside from the odd interjection from Loony Shouting Woman - I LOVE YOU BRETT! I  LOVE YOU! - the crowd are respectful and allow Brett to shine. In the way that some merely aspire to, hope to be, aim to be great singers and want to be Great so much it actually makes them less so, Brett just naturally is. With Brett there's no artifice, no third wall, no pretence, but simply a singer and his songs. Recast in the slim backing, raw, nude even, the songs are set as epic in vision yet human in nature. Aided by a Cellist, Brett plucks out the notes of these songs, and they become real - kitchen sink dramas plucked from our real lives where hope and reality collide. 'Intelligent friends don't care in the end about my life', Brett sings on the opening number. Rarely has anyone cut through all the smoke of life and got right to the point in such a way.

Art is the thing that reveals life for what it is, not what we think it is, nor the constructs around which we hide to run from our feelings. These songs, some known previously as barnstorming massive slices of stomping pop-rock, are actually gentle, brittle things. When Brett takes to the piano and plays new single "Back To You" (possibly the best thing he's done in a decade), and follows it with three Suede songs it's literally religious. As "High Rising" moves swiftly and without pause into a piano-led, breathtaking "The Asphalt World", it shows that at their best, Suede were reaching for the stars with an ambition that was epic in every sense. It's possibly the best version of the song I've ever heard, a succinct five minute beauty that reveals that inside the dark whirlpool that lies at the heart of "Dog Man Star" is a song of unparalleled majesty. It draws the first portion of the evening to a close with a largely stunned silence.

The second set follows a similar pattern, a cohesive mixture of solo and Suede material played on guitar and piano, mixed deftly to reveal that at the heart of all things, Brett Anderson is an artist looking to reveal the secret of life with his songs. With many songs performed for the first time since Suede split, it allows the listener an opportunity to see the thread that ties all his work together : the quest for a life that makes some kind of sense. These songs are the work of vision, to create a new reality, to go to a place where the weather suits my clothes. And, when held against the high standards of the better-known Suede canon, Brett's solo material stands as equal in strength and power.

Finally, Brett wraps up with hopeful laments of "So Young" and "Trash" that transform formerly rampaging rock beasts into hopeful pleas to a world where one day, someday, they'll get away and go west. Undoubtedly, for me, the best Brett Anderson show since the Suede split four years ago, and very possibly the best performance I have seen Brett give (and I've seen a few, to say the least). Brett is fast becoming a modern day legend, creating because he needs to, removed from the commercial need for megasuccess to follow a vital and important muse wherever it leads him, casting himself as a modern, contemporary singer of hitherto unknown genres, these modern day scifi lullabies. Nobody does it quite this way - and to be blunt, I don't want anyone else to. Whilst other, far lesser talents devalue the idea of the singer-songwriter with their bland tripe, Brett Anderson is worth a million James Blunt's, a trillion David Gray's, because this isn't a habit or an enterprise designed to reach the coffee tables of suburban housewives, but an adventure into life itself. A voyage of discovery.

Setlist:

Love Is Dead

Song For My Father

Clowns

Ebony

Everything Will Flow

Saturday Night

Back To You

Down

High Rising

The Asphalt World

The Living Dead

Europe Is Our Playground

The Big Time

Indian Strings

The Colour Of The Night

To The Winter

By The Sea

The 2 Of Us

The Wild Ones

So Young

Trash

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