Ignore him! Ignore him!

 A very fortunate visit!

When I listened to Suede's previous album, I enjoyed it so much that I decided to go and see them live - which was a really enjoyable evening, even though I ended up having to wait for about a year for it to actually happen (because of the Brixton Academy crush). So, when I got to listen to their latest album last week (which is well worth checking out), I thought I'd see if I could repeat this trick - imagine my surprise when I saw they were playing that very weekend and there were still a final few tickets left. It was obviously an omen, so what could I do?!?

And so, on a wet but surprisingly mild Sunday night (me - out on a Sunday?!?) I headed along to a most unlikely venue for this kind of thing - Royal Festival Hall. I can only remember being there once before and it certainly wasn't to see a load of middle-aged men making an awful racket (as I can imagine the sort of person who is often there might say). My last minute ticket was a standing ticket, which was a bit peculiar because I wasn't aware that RFH had any standing areas - and when I got there, it became clear that's because they don't really have any standing areas! They do, however, have an accessway behind the last row of seats which someone realised they could sell tickets for (hence the last minute availability, I suspect) - and I actually had quite a decent view of the stage from there (at least until other people got involved - more on this later).

First up (and perfectly visible, at least when she put the lights on) was Gazelle Twin, who I'd never heard of - and she was really quite something. She brought Bjork to mind in that she's got quite a haunting voice and she was singing over an ethereal backing track, although it was considerably more bassy than you'd expect from the mad-as-a-box-frogs Icelandic warbler. It's not clear how mad Ms Twin is, but I certainly have a suspicion she's not exactly conventional - the music wasn't horrible but it was certainly more challenging than I felt the need for on a Sunday night. I did however very much enjoy watching people work their way to their seats in the dark and then, two minutes later, head back to the bar with their body language simply screaming “nope, not for me thank you” - I stayed throughout but it did feel like a verrrry loooonnnnng 35 minutes.

Everyone returned soon enough when the lights went up for the interval - and some brave souls down the front even went and stood in front of the stage! My, the crowd was THREE people deep in places - all of which was very different from the last time I saw them at Brixton Electric where the whole of the downstairs area was a massed throng. People seemed happy enough to see the band when they showed up though even if this didn't result in anything radical like actually standing up - which meant I still had a very decent view.

The band opened the set with four tracks from the new album, including "Disintegrate" and "Dancing With The Europeans" which I think are probably my favourite tracks - they went down pretty well but obviously suffered from the usual issue that people haven't had time to truly learn to love them yet - so things were still all a bit subdued. However, it then kicked off with "Trash" and "Animal Nitrate" (which was released 32 years ago, but still sounds very fresh) as the crowd rose as one and started dancing - FINALLY!

A load of people downstairs also realised that no-one standing in front of the stage had suffered anything more than some disapproving tutting and there was a definite "well, if they can get away with it..." movement - which Brett (Suede's charismatic front man) thoroughly approved of, shouting "COME FORWARD!!" whenever he could. All of which meant that security now felt the need to get involved to try to stop this somewhat leisurely stage rush (a stage amble?), which Brett was amusingly not having at all - "JUST IGNORE HIM - FUCK SECURITY!". In the end a compromise was reached whereby everyone ignored security - which I'm not condoning because I'm all for appropriate levels of crowd safety, but looking at the average age of the audience, I suspect there was still an awful lot of polite interaction and very little risk of injury.

I say I suspect there was because, once everyone had stood up, I couldn't see a bloody thing. There's something about Suede (maybe the Richard Osman connection?) but they seem to have incredibly tall fans - in the end I did find a channel of acceptable visibility, but there really were some giants around which made it a challenging exercise. It didn't overly affect my enjoyment though - the sound was great and the band were in fine form. Most of the tracks were from their latest two albums but they played at least one track from nine of their albums over the years with "She Still Leads Me On" (which went down very well for a recent track), "The Asphalt World" (one of my favourite Suede tracks, and featured Brett singing sans mic in the middle of it), "Metal Mickey" and "The Beautiful Ones" being highlights for me. 

Brett is a most entertaining front man and even takes a couple of trips into the crowd - interestingly (and incredibly), he does this with the wired mic that he uses on stage which must involve an awful lot of cable co-ordination (of an awful lot of cable). However, it's the guitars (Richard Oakes and Neil Codling) that really make the band for me - they stand out really well on the last couple of albums and they were on great form here. It's interesting to compare them with Pulp who I saw live earlier in the year because both shows were great but Pulp felt to be slowing down and much more interested in past glories - although, to be fair to Pulp, they formed THIRTEEN years earlier than Suede, so maybe they're allowed to have slowed down a bit.

Yes, it was an unusual venue for that sort of music, my line of sight was often obscured and the crowd took a bit of time to warm up but it really feels like we got a band at the top of their game - I (and everyone else, from the looks of things) had a great evening and went away very happy.