Tears before bedtime

(I think nme.com already used "Tears in Heaven")
So, I went to see The Tears last night, at Heaven nightclub at Charing Cross... you know what? It wasn't all that. I love Suede, but never saw them live with Bernard Butler, so the opportunity to see him reunited on stage with Brett Anderson at last was an opportunity and a half. The gig sold out in about fifteen minutes and you could smell the anticipation in the crowd.

There was a support, The Subways, and they were ace, a very spiky young English three piece, sounding a bit like the White Stripes, with a lady bass player. See them, I'm sure they'll be everywhere next year, maybe you already saw them at Glastonbury. I didn't.

The first track from The Tears was great - could have been just the novelty of seeing them on stage together, or it could have been truly a great song. I don't know what it was called, but hopefully there's a setlist over on thetears.org... The reason I wasn't that enamoured with the whole performance was that it was so difficult to get a handle on it. When you hear a song for the first time and you like it, you want to hear it again. If you can't it's just ANNOYING! So with no material released before the gig, and no familiar songs at all, it's hard to think anything other than "that was alright"... I'll see them again and hopefully the material is really great. There were a couple of tracks that stood out as being quite epic, but also some that sounded like Brett's old cliched lyrics about gasoline in the streets and dogs running and that... maybe I misheard. I didn't mishear Bernard telling us that he was fucked, and he couldn't lie to us. He had a few tech problems, maybe it was down to him being a bit wobbly, but maybe that's just his style. When I've seen him with McAlmont and on his own he's had tech problems and made a show of being moody and kicking things about, so perhaps it's part of his show. Countering Bernard's bad cop routine, Brett was smiling brightly throughout.

I also didn't mishear many shouts for Suede songs, mostly "The Drowners" and "Animal Nitrate". No shouts from me, I promise. A few Suede covers would have improved the show, but it's up to the band whether they play old material or not. It looked and it smelled like a Suede reunion, but they're not on the Here and Now tour just yet. Brett responded with "no, you're at the wrong gig", and I think he might have been right.

Metal detectors on the way into the gig, the alarm went off for every single person, who then got a cursory patting down, finding nothing. What were they looking for? Didn't see any guns in the venue, but there were cameras and video cameras everywhere, and the show was being professionally recorded. Oh and Clare got ID'd, though she really stood out, most of the crowd were odd looking and ugly...

2004 :: Comment / reply