St David’s Hall has an uncanny ability to feel like an intimate venue at times, yet seeming massive at others. Perhaps it’s the band themselves that create the warm atmosphere, but either way Suede and St David’s Hall feel like perfect bedfellows tonight, in front of a sold-out crowd.

To music fans of a certain age, this band may evoke some 90s fever-dream memories of smoky indie discos playing their hits. Unlike most of their contemporaries, Suede have consistently (well, save for one 10-year hiatus) released superb material, including last year’s Autofiction. As Brett Anderson and co take to the stage, that’s where we start, the band launching into a triple whammy from the album: Turn Off Your Brain And Yell, Personality Disorder and 15 Again.

The band’s confidence in their new material is reciprocated by the crowd’s early enthusiasm, and if everybody weren’t already on their feet, then back-to-back 90s hits in The Drowners, Animal Nitrate, Trash and We Are The Pigs completes that task. The age-defying Anderson, with his skinny jeans/shirt combo and the odd Jagger-esque dance move, is still the consummate frontman, and his voice shows no sign of weakness as he still demonstrates on those high notes. There’s no better example of this than when Anderson takes front and centre for Europe Is Our Playground, or later when he is accompanied by a lone piano to belt out Obsessions – or “the good song from the crap album,” as he puts it.

There are a hardcore group of Suede fans who would tell you that the band still miss Bernard Butler. The guitarist left the band in 1994, with his teenage replacement Richard Oakes stepping into what seemed at the time an impossible job, but having been a staple part of the band ever since, his addition to the live aspect of the band shouldn’t be understated. His engagement with the fans on tracks like Can’t Get Enough, coupled with bags of energy and solid guitar work, make him a vital part of the Suede experience. An acoustic version of The Wild Ones further backs this, and before you know it we’re on the home run with classic after classic, as So Young is followed by Metal Mickey.

A well-needed interlude follows, the ever-active Anderson by now saturated with sweat, but there’s a Suede essential that we’ve yet to hear and the boys duly oblige, sending the crowd home happy with the anthemic The Beautiful Ones. There was an urgency about Suede tonight: after 30 years, they are still a force to contend with.

Suede, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Wed 22 Mar

words CHRIS ANDREWS photos SIMON AYRE