British alternative rock bands Suede and the Manic Street Preachers are to perform together in New Taipei City on Nov. 15, the show’s promoter announced.
The concert — set to be Suede’s fifth and the Manic Street Preachers’ first in Taiwan — is to take place at Zepp Taipei in Sinjhuang District (新莊). Tickets are on sale online with prices ranging from NT$2,800 to NT$4,300.
The bands, big in the British alternative music scene in the 1990s, are coheadlining a tour and have announced dates for Taiwan, Singapore and Japan in November.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Prominent in the Cool Cymru movement in Wales, the Manic Street Preachers made their debut in 1992 with Generation Terrorists, an album with a hard rock edge and left-leaning political messages.
Unlike most of their peers who explored light-hearted themes about the lives of young working-class people, the band was not afraid to take on social issues, lamenting the rise of consumerism and social alienation in the song Motorcycle Emptiness and criticizing the sexual exploitation of women with Little Baby Nothing.
After the disappearance of their guitarist and lyricist Richey James, the remaining band members — vocalist and guitarist James Dean Bradford, bassist Nicky Wire and drummer Sean Moore — continued to release a series of critically acclaimed albums that turned toward more sophisticated and relatively pop-oriented melodies.
Suede is widely recognized as one of the bands that started Britpop with the release of their eponymous debut album in 1993.
The band took the British music scene by storm with former guitarist Bernard Butler’s elaborately crafted fuzzed-out riffs and front man Brett Anderson’s androgynous and theatrical stage presence central to their public persona in early years.
Two singles from that album, Animal Nitrate and Metal Mickey, have become Britpop anthems, as has their 1996 hit Beautiful Ones.
From soaring rockers to wistful, melancholic ballads, the band’s music covers a wide range of moods and often explores themes of love, desire, urban life and decadence.
Despite many of their contemporaries fading into obscurity with the coming of the millennium, Suede and the Manic Street Preachers have remained active through the years and continued to make new music into the 2020s.
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