Here’s what Manic Street Preachers and Suede played as they kicked off their co-headline UK tour

Lis Sinatra

Manic Street Preachers and Suede played the first gig of their co-headline tour of the UK last night. Check out the setlist below.

The two indie giants kicked off their joint tour last night at Llangollen International Eisteddfod 2024. The bands first toured Europe together back in 1993, before last year they recreated the line-up for a string of US shows. They’ll also return for joint dates in Japan this winter.

On their UK and Ireland tour, each act will perform for approximately 75 minutes, taking it in turns to play last each evening. Last night, Manic Street Preachers took the finale spot, closing the show with ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’ from their 1998 album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’.

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Prior to the tour, Manics’ frontman James Dean Bradfield promised that the Manics would deliver “a banging greatest hits set – as simple as that”. And it seemed they delivered, with the band playing hits from each era of their almost 40-year career.

Speaking to NME ahead of their US tour together in 2022, Bradfield recalled their joint 1994 tour, when the Manics were promoting their seminal third album ‘The Holy Bible’. “God almighty, that’s a long time ago, isn’t it? I vividly remember those gigs because Richey [Edwards, now missing guitarist] was coming back from what you might call his emotional event and was insisting that he wanted to come on the road,” he said. “We were treading softly with Richey at some points, and Suede had lost Bernard Butler as their guitarist and were going through the transition of Richard Oakes coming into the band.

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“I remember just looking at them and thinking, ‘Wow, are they going to survive after losing Bernard?’ Because he was such a brilliant guitarist and musical architect. He had that chemistry of writing with Brett and left big shoes to fill. I remember being obsessed with ‘Dog Man Star’ (1994) when it came out, which is such an amazing album that I used to listen to all the time.”

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“Watching Suede on stage and Richard Oakes was just amazing. He had the hair, he had the moves, he had the chops, and he fitted in on stage. The next question was if they could write songs together, they came out with [1996 album] ‘Coming Up’ which is one of the best albums of the ‘90s.”

Suede’s setlist was:

‘Turn Off Your Brain and Yell’
‘Trash’
‘Animal Nitrate’
‘The Drowners’
‘We Are the Pigs’
‘Pale Snow’
‘I Don’t Know How to Reach You’
‘Killing of a Flashboy’
‘Filmstar’
‘Antidepressants’
‘Life Is Golden’
‘She Still Leads Me On’
‘Shadow Self’
‘The 2 of Us’
‘So Young’
‘Metal Mickey’
‘Beautiful Ones’

Manic Street Preachers’ setlist was:

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‘Motorcycle Emptiness’
‘From Despair to Where’
‘Everything Must Go’
‘Slash ‘n’ Burn’
‘You Stole The Sun From My Heart’
‘To Repel Ghosts’
‘Little Baby Nothing (with The Anchoress)’
‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (with The Anchoress)’
‘Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier’
‘A Design For Life’
‘La tristesse durera (Scream to a Sigh)’
‘Walk Me To The Bridge’
‘Tsunami’
‘Orwellian’
‘You Love Us’
‘No Surface All Feeling’
‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’

Suede recently announced that the recording of a new album is under way, and it’s going to be “noisy”, “unhinged” and “raw”, according to Brett Anderson. They debuted a taste of it at Isle Of Wight Festival earlier this month, playing a new track titled ‘Antidepressants’ during their set at the festival on June 23. Based around urgent post-punk guitar riffs and a typically Suede anthemic chorus, the song offers a preview of their self-described “raw”, new era.

Meanwhile, earlier this month Manic Street Preachers shared details of a new book of previously unseen Valerie Phillips photographs of the band, titled Little Baby Nothings.The book will feature over 200 photographs taken by the artist in 1991 and 1992, around the time of the release of their debut album ‘Generation Terrorists’.

Suede and Manic Street Preachers will head to Dublin next week (July 5), before playing Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Leeds. The tour will wrap up in London’s Alexandra Palace Park on July 18. You can find any remaining tickets here.

The remaining Suede and Manic Street Preachers tour dates are:

Tuesday 2 – Dublin Trinity College **
Friday 5 – Cardiff Castle *
Wednesday 10 – Edinburgh Castle *
Friday 12 – Manchester Castlefield Bowl *
Saturday 13 – Leeds Millenium Square **
Thursday 18 – London Alexandra Palace Park **

*Manic Street Preachers close the show
**Suede close the show