It’s Saturday night and “And it’ll be okay like everyone says / It’ll be alright and ever so nice / We’re going out tonight”. Yes, we’re going out, specifically to Royal Arena in Copenhagen along around 11,000 other people. And “we’ll go dancing”, because Suede are playing and their frontman Brett Andersonis ready to charm all of us.
On a fairly essential stage, the concert opened with Disintegrate and Antidepressants and those were the songs that we, photographers, were allowed to shoot from the pit. I believe that only by trying to keep the singer in focus in the frame of the camera, one can really realise how energetic the performance is: Brett sings, runs, whips the air with the mic cable and restlessly moves in a continuous exchange of feelings with the crowd.
The crowd: a very mixed assortment of people of all ages, from veterans to young followers, packed like sardines totally unaware of their surroundings almost all the way to the mixer, making it very difficult to fence my way to the back and to some large shots.
The setlist balanced nicely between the two newest albums, Autofiction and Antidepressants, and older releases. Although it was mentioned a couple of times that “We are an anti-nostalgia band” it’s also true that “sometimes we like to dig into our past” and it’s with the oldies that the arena becomes a gigantic karaoke (also thanks to the lyrics projected on the backdrop).
The generosity of the frontman towards the attendees is literally tangible, as he often goes down from the stage to touch hands with the first rows and if it was not enough, venturing in the middle of the floor during Beautiful Ones, a bright white shirt in the spotlight among a sea of adoring dark t-shirts.
Let’s be honest though: despite the band on stage – precise and professional – it’s a one man show from start to finish. It is Brett Anderson who charms the crowd and has it at his fingertips, moving bodies, putting hands together to the rhythm of the music, even making the people sing in his place to rest his voice a bit.
Where do I want to get with all these random thoughts collected after a good 1 hour 40 minutes of performance?
I guess the point of all of this is that Suede in their 25+ years of activity are still a staple of Britpop; they might or might not have lost a touch of glam in their sound along the way, but they can still mesmerise a small few-hundreds-of-people club as well as a big several-thousands-of-people arena. According to your preference of setting, you’ll probably have to balance out intimacy with the grandiose feeling of a crowd that acts as one, but either way the word of advice is, if you’ll ever have the chance, don’t miss them out.
