Manic Street Preachers and Suede might never have reached the giddy, world-conquering highs set by fellow 90s UK alternative heavyweights like Blur or Oasis, but their place in the British rock music canon remains indisputable. More cerebral, sonically riskier and perhaps harder to outright love than their broad-appeal britpop contemporaries, these two were always the thinking man’s choice when it came to British guitar bands. Currently embarked a co-headline tour with alternate top billing, Manics and Suede are the first bands of this scale to perform together on the same night as part of Manchester’s Sounds of the City series – the usual format of which highlights a single act with preamble from one or two smaller supports.
It’s an interesting switch-up, and fantastic value for money regardless of the increased ticket price, though, as with the implementation of any new format, resulted in some turbulence. Suede kicked things off as a quarter of the crowd were still making their way in, powering through the drizzle with the cosmic chug of ‘Turn off your brain and yell’ – the expansive closer to 2022’s ‘Autofiction’ – before launching into ‘Trash’, the bittersweet fan favourite written in their honour; “ But we’re trash, you and me, we’re the litter on the breeze ”. Then comes the anthemic ‘Animal Nitrate’, perhaps Suede’s most widely recognised track beyond their devoted fanbase, rounding out an opening suite that spans their entire c.