Live Report: Manics And Suede triumph in Dublin

Around 30 years ago, the late, lamented Select magazine opined that in the Britpop landscape, Manic Street Preachers and Suede stood apart as two bands who were “a cause – a belief system”. What would have been the odds that, 30 years later, they’d still be serving the same purpose?

Undoubtedly, a major part of their enduring appeal is that, with Britpop reaching its zenith in 1994, both groups offered radical counter-programming to the giddy party vibes of Parklife and Definitely Maybe. That year saw the Manics and Suede issue a brace of dark masterpieces, the former with The Holy Bible, the latter with Dog Man Star.

Aside from the fact of their creative brilliance, the sheer punk audacity of those records more or less guaranteed both acts a cult following for life. Thus, there’s an especially warm reception for the Manics as they arrive and tear into a triptych of classics, ‘You Love Us’, ‘Everything Must Go’ and ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, the latter – which plays like Guns N’Roses with lyrics by Camus – accompanied by its memorable video, with the young Manics wandering Tokyo.

Manic Street Preachers at Trinity Summer Series. Copyright Peter O'Hanlon.

Throughout the set, there are some fond Irish memories (“We had some great fucking times in Blooms’ Hotel,” Nicky Wire reminisces) and – as often the case with visiting acts – the obligatory acknowledgment of some Irish roots (“I know you have Leinster and Connacht and all that bollocks,” says frontman James Dean Bradfield, before pointing to the back-up guitarist Wayne Murray. “Anyway, his family are from Galway”).

It’s remarkable how your musical taste evolves over the years. I’ve always been a fan of The Holy Bible, but these days it actually occupies a place in my all-time top ten albums list, which I don’t think I’d ever have predicted 20 years ago. The fact is, the album’s ingenious aesthetic mix – like the Sex Pistols produced by Trent Reznor with lyrics from JG Ballard – has grown on me to the point where its brutally intense power has become undeniable.

Manic Street Preachers at Trinity Summer Series. Copyright Peter O'Hanlon.

Indeed, The Holy Bible’s nihilistic socio-political commentary – the majority of it from the much missed Richey Edwards – makes it a very 21st century album, with the sort of urgency alarmingly lacking in much of today’s music. As such a Bible deep cut, the gorgeously melancholic ‘This Is Yesterday’ is an unsurprising highlight.

The other standout moments come courtesy of the Manics’ signature tunes, ‘A Design For Life’ and ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’. As well as prompting a mass singalong, the former is also accompanied by a truly mesmerising video collage of upper class affluence, consumerist lifestyle
porn and footage from the ’80s miners’ strikes, all highlighting the song’s theme of working class pride and class warfare. Again, I find myself asking: are there many artists today in the pop mainstream producing work as radical as this? I’m really not sure they are.

Just to emphasise the Manics’ gift for subversion, they sign off with an epic version of ‘Tolerate’, a futurist paean to political insurrection that actually hit number one in 1998 – and again, good luck finding a chart-topper as innovative as that any time soon.

Manic Street Preachers at Trinity Summer Series. Copyright Peter O'Hanlon.

Playing to their middle class base, as the band departs, the screens show a Bukowski quote which reads, “I feel like kicking myself in the ass when I go to gatherings, even if the drinks are free. It never works for me. People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”

Certainly, after a couple of hours on our feet, many of us might feel the desire to go home and relieve the baby-sitter of their duties, or put our feet up and watch the a recording of the Euros. But there’s still another round to go, and in short order, Suede take to the stage and send everyone apeshit once again, with ferocious takes on glam-punk anthems like ‘Trash’, ‘Animal Nitrate’ and ‘The Drowners’, the latter finding frontman Brett Anderson taking off into the crowd.

Suede at Trinity Summer Series. Copyright Peter O'Hanlon.

It’s a wildly exciting opening salvo, once again demonstrating that, when it comes describing the experience of growing up in anonymous provincial towns and suburbs and making art of it, Anderson’s lyrical genius is perhaps only rivalled by his generational peer Jarvis Cocker.

Elsewhere, further highlights with a brace of Dog Man Star cuts, the wracked, Scott-style ballad ‘The 2 Of Us’ and the stomping ‘New Generation’, before Suede send everyone exhilarated and satisfied with the shamelessly bouncy singalong euphoria of ‘Beautiful Ones’.

Suede at Trinity Summer Series. Copyright Peter O'Hanlon.

What an evening – that’s my gig of the year sorted, for sure.