Suede live at Bristol Beacon: Gig Review

Live4ever 4 February, 2026

A photo of the band Suede

Suede by Dean Chalkley

4.5 stars hq

Suede have truly solidified their sound, and their great trick is their ability to often write the same song but make each iteration feel vital.

After a run of limited shows promoting their latest album Antidepressants in the autumn, Suede are currently on a full UK tour showcasing the second in their ‘black and white’ trilogy alongside selected tracks from across their career.

Suede walk on to a pulsing version of Disintegrate from their new album, a synthetic throb that primes the room before a single member appears.

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The crowd falls instinctively into time, clapping along as if summoned. When they take the stage and launch into the track proper it’s with the confidence of a group long past needing to prove anything.

Brett Anderson drops the microphone after the first line, the first of several occasions he does so (Live4ever counted three). However, it’s no omen.

Anderson sings much of the early set from stage left, prowling and gesturing, already restless. Perhaps because it’s a Monday night the first attempted singalong falls flat, despite the lyrics helpfully glowing on the screen.

It doesn’t last long, with the audience’s recalcitrance fully eroded by the time the band unleash Trash four songs in.

Suede have truly solidified their sound, and their great trick is their ability to often write the same song, with sweeping melodies and melodrama, but make each iteration feel vital.

Dancing With The Europeans is a perfect case in point; it could have come at any point in their career but has a thrilling purity in execution.

Anderson doesn’t speak much, but when he says, ‘Welcome to Suede world’, a few songs in it doesn’t feel ironic.

Actions speak louder than words of course, and Trash prompts the first of many crowd incursions as Anderson goes right in.

By the time Animal Nitrate reaches its outro he’s gone full Brett, swinging hips and clapping along insolently. More than thirty years have passed but the song’s power, and his own, remain.

Antidepressants gets a fair hearing, but deep(ish) cuts pepper the set. Killing Of A Flash Boy audibly pleases the faithful, while Pantomime Horse sounds enormous.

Sonically, Suede are on exceptional form. Since its refurbishment, the Beacon’s acoustics are world class, allowing Anderson’s voice and Neil Codling and Richard Oakes’ guitars to slice cleanly through the venue, sitting comfortably alongside Simon Gilbert’s gargantuan drums.

In keeping with the album artwork, the band is visually committed to regulation black, with only bassist Mat Osman breaking ranks in grey jeans.

Reflecting their current work ethic (Antidepressants is their fifth album in twelve years), they haven’t been idle in the last few months, with a brand new song You Are My Tribe dedicated to, ‘the insatiable ones, the beautiful ones and the wild ones’.

A flash forward to ‘Suede 11’, it bodes well for their ongoing purple patch; a snarly, sharp-toothed belter.

Trance State, driven by a fuzzy bassline, sounds like the best Cure song Robert Smith never wrote. The piano-only Life Is Golden is the night’s emotional peak; written for Anderson’s son, who is in the audience, he sings a section without a microphone.

Even unamplified his voice, demonstrably getting better with age, reverberates through the hall.

As if to redeem himself, during So Young the frontman swings his mic cable around his head like a lasso.

Preceded by the classic Metal Mickey, Beautiful Ones is announced with a marching intro, and Anderson spends the entire song in the crowd.

The band exit, only to return for an encore of The Only Way I Can Look At You, almost in a hurry for some well-earned rest.

Full of theatricality and sheer commitment (mic drops and all), one of Britain’s consistently best bands do the business yet again.

Richard Bowes

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Tags:richard bowes, Suede