My first memories of Suede are the thickly-curtained walls of ‘Animal Nitrate’, shown to me by my eager father. He was keen to point out all the hard work of his mate who had lit the set, avidly dispensing wistful memories of their debut show at the O2 Academy Brixton in 1993, consecrating for another generation this soundtrack of the nineties. ‘Animal Nitrate’ abounds in dystopian lyrics, guitar shear, flashings of lurid images, swirling around frontman Brett Anderson’s flailing arms – the nauseating camerawork pulling you in, pulling you out. Thirty years later, Suede’s sound is equally immense: the lights come up in Cambridge’s Corn Exchange with a wall of distorted sound, felt in the throat, the eyes, thrumming through the crowd like it’s nothing. Hands go up as Suede’s ‘Disintegrate’ comes on, a track from their tenth studio album, Antidepressants (2025).

“Just on the edge of giving out, his words seem to draw on all the energy in his body to become supersonic”

Suddenly, the wave of overdriven guitar seems to kick through something; it transcends, shimmering with nostalgia-sodden shades of Britpop, as Brett’s voice reaches up to the high ceilings. The blood-thumping, foot-pumping drums thrash out a heartbeat that drowns into the wash of the guitar; the lyrics – “Come down and disintegrate with me,” Brett howls – try to pull me from my cozied spot up in the balcony, they refuse to dissolve in the sea of sound. If there was any timeless question to start with, it would be: have Suede still got it? As Brett’s voice flies out over the heads of the crowd, beginning ‘Dancing with the Europeans’, he obliterates the question – just on the edge of giving out, his words seem to draw on all the energy in his body to become supersonic.

The band frontload their classics: ‘Trash’ and ‘Animal Nitrate’ come early in the set, keeping energy high. Brett welcomes the audience to ‘Suede-world’, where many fans ‘have bought a nice little house’, where breezes of litter pass by, where ‘We’re lovers on the streets’. Just trash? Anything but. The Cambridge audience roar the lyrics back at the stage in a fabulous moment of mutual self-deprecating interchange: “We’re trash, you and me” sung to and from the stage, as Brett drops to his knees the sound of the band flies over his head, invasive, into eyes, ear canals, souls.

When I managed to see them on the launch of Antidepressants, Suede filled every seat in London’s Royal Festival Hall; people of all ages danced, twisted, and curled, in their small allotted space, a thick border of sweaty hands and faces built up just before the stage, fanning hands grasping out in swathes to clasp Brett’s shirt, to touch him as he kneels before the crowd, draining himself into the microphone.

Cambridge is, so far, more tame. The extra distance between barriers and stage helps: wearing the same white shirt and tight black jeans combo, Brett delivers a masterclass in stagecraft. He darts up onto the amps, leans into the crowd – then back down, to his knees – descends into the trench between stage and audience, emerges, swinging the microphone in hallucinogenic circles from its cable.

“The band radiate in palpable allure, boasting a confident sheen twinned with a heartfelt transparency: you just want to reach out and touch it”

Reaching the peak of many songs, he discards the mic over his shoulder. It hits the ground with the sound of crackling popcorn as he bursts into dance, his undulating body carrying him across the stage, his familiar arm-swinging sex-appeal, small-stepping and hip-wiggling to the incendiary riffs of the guitars, the tom-heavy trundling of the drums, the constant grumble of the bass.

With ‘Antidepressants’, Suede seem to have hit their apotheosis. It’s brutal, angry, even relentless, and yet songs swell with soul, spirit, warbling with love and beauty. The gent seated in front of me records the full duration of a song, takes a handful of photos – he uploads them, mid-gig, to the family group chat, following a WhatsApp sticker of a suited doge with a collage of multi-coloured stills of Brett pouring himself into the crowd, captioning it simply ‘Suede.’ The band radiate in palpable allure, boasting a confident sheen twinned with a heartfelt transparency: you just want to reach out and touch it.

Just as ‘The Big Time’ from their 1993 debut album comes into being, the sound tapers out. Folding his arms behind his back, Brett raises his chin and continues unassisted – in a valuable moment of connection, his voice, purely acoustic, fills the Corn Exchange, ballooning up to its tall rafters. As Suede continue to thunder into their third act, the bloke behind me, in a thick Glaswegian accent, goes “That was f***ing fantastic.” I can almost hear the tears blistering in his eyes.

Brett’s shirt, now near-completely transparent, has become saturated with sweat: descending from the dizzying lights of stage, he melts into the crowd, delivering the final undulating sounds of Suede from amidst his fans. And with that, it’s over. Many leave their seats, head on home. But Suede always come back. I watch with a smirk as the crew pretend to clear the stage. The band return for a last rendition of ‘The Only Way I Can Love You’. Suede’s sound seamlessly worms its way into your heart. I can only stumble out of Cambridge’s Corn Exchange, my days and dreams and daydreams littered with figments of a white-shirted ghost, wheeling around with uncontrolled grace to the undying words: “We’re so young and so gone.”