SUEDE must be one of the few bands whose reformation is as successful, if not more so, than their first phase. Ten years and four albums after they got back together, they’re producing music every bit as ambitious and exciting as their heyday. 

The hype of their early years may have passed but they can still sell out mid-size venues and have the audience singing along word for word. One of the keys for this success is their desire not to coast on nostalgia. While many of their contemporaries have reformed purely for financial gain, creativity and passion seem to be the main drivers for Suede.

This passion is evident from the very first note. On the last night of their tour, frontman Brett Anderson is part personal trainer, part army sergeant as he whips the crowd into a fervour. “C’mon Leeds, let’s make this special!” he orders, the back of his shirt soaked in sweat before the band are even three songs into the 90-minute set. 

The way he interacts with fans, walking into the adoring throng during a euphoric The Drowners, makes you wonder how he coped with lockdown. What Am I Without You (not played tonight) addresses this very point, having been written as a love song to the audience. 

And the theme of celebrating live performance informs the entirety of 2022’s Autofiction, which could have been created specifically for the stage. 

Raw and aggressive, it reveals Anderson’s oft-mentioned love of the Sex Pistols. Driven by a back-to-basics approach to writing and recording, it has an urgency and renewed sense of musicians enjoying themselves. They start as they mean to go on with Richard Oakes’s searing post-punk guitars on Turn Off Your Brains and Yell. This forms an opening triumvirate of driving rock songs — completed by Personality Disorder and 15 Again — that make it hard to imagine how they were ever perceived as being fey. 

Songs from their extensive back catalogue fit remarkably well into this rough-house aesthetic. The focus on urgency and accessible melodies means the dark, atmospheric orchestration of their previous two albums are sidelined in favour of rabble-rousers such as Can’t Get Enough, from the little loved 1999 album Head Music, and Filmstar. 

Tracks from 1996’s Coming Up also work particularly well, saved from their sometimes thin studio versions to become electrifying celebrations of difference. Here are the “tasteless bracelets” of Trash and the “shaved heads, rave heads” of the encore The Beautiful Ones (“the last song we’re going to do on this tour”).

In among these visceral thrills they sandwich two of the quieter moments at which they excel. The drop in volume leads to good-humoured heckling (“it sounds like a sophisticated football match”), with Anderson’s gorgeous solo rendition of The Wild Ones leading to a mass swoon. Yet the real surprise is Stay Connected, a track they’ve long dismissed. Backed by Neil Codling on e-piano, who’s the unflappable yin to Anderson’s energetic yang, it has a yearning vulnerability in place of the original’s bombastic pop. 

The track’s airing suggests a band coming to peace with their history while also being confident in their continued relevance (or to “prance around having fun,” as Anderson puts it). In a set that energises and thrills, they’ve more than earned this status.

Suede will play Kite festival June 9-11, info: suede.co.uk