Suede And The Manic Street Preachers In Manchester

When it was announced that Suede and the Manic Street Preachers would be embarking on a joint headline tour, I was beyond excited—two of my favourite bands on the same gig. I made sure that I got a ticket for the Manics' headlining date, so I made my way in the drizzle to Manchester and Castlefield Bowl.

Given that both bands would be performing on the same stage, I was curious about their respective setlists, given their substantial back catalogues. My Manics best-of playlist runs for just over five hours!

Suede is straight into it, punchy, and together, Brett Anderson seems to defy the process of ageing as he lithely cavorts around the stage, and he’s soon wading into the crowd and generally thoroughly enjoying himself. The second track is Trash, one of my all-time favourite songs. The song instantly transports me to a pre-digital era when I was hitching or cadjing rides to distant towns to see bands, uncertain about how I would get home. I found it quite emotional, in a way that only music linked to memory can produce.

Animal Nitrate, The Drowners, and We Are the Pigs are brilliant before Brett leads a crowd singalong for Saturday Night and then shows the power of his voice, which is still full and emotive with a beautiful acoustic rendition of The Wild Ones. The show ends with a euphoric rendition of Beautiful Ones. To be honest, if I’d just paid to see Suede in this sparkling form, I’d have gone home happy, but then the Manics came roaring onto the stage.

The Manics are in my blood. I feel that the songs, passion, and emotion that they have displayed since they came charging out of South Wales have very much been the soundtrack to my life. When I say that the Manics are in my blood, I very much feel that. They were in the year below me in sixth-form college (although I didn’t know them), and they have steadfastly sung about and used imagery from growing up in the politics of Wales and its proud working-class culture. I’ve seen them more times than I can remember, and I always look forward to the rejuvenating experience that is Mancis Live.

You could get a good education just by delving into the writers, philosophers, and events in the Mancis lyrics, and in classic style, the backdrop before they take the stage is a quote from Manchester author Anthony Burgess: “It’s always good to remember where you came from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you’re going.” - Quite.

Normally, You Love Us comes towards the end of a Mancis set, but not tonight. The Mancis mean business, and it’s full throttle from the get-go. Everything Must Go and the peerless Motorcycle Emptiness follow before fellow Welsh singer The Anchoress joins for Little Baby Nothing and Your Love Alone Is Not Enough, and then the defiance of working-class culture in A Design for Life rings out with everyone singing along. 
The set shows the breadth of their back catalogue with Orwellian from the Mancis fourteenth album, showing that the band has lost none of their spirit. The antif-fascist If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next, celebrating the idealism of Welsh volunteers who joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War closes out the set.

Both bands play 17 tracks, and I could not have wished for more (other than a better train service back to Leeds!). Despite both bands having been around for over 30 years, the fire still burns brightly, and I can’t wait till I get the chance to see them again.