peaking of nasty facial hair, Suede's Matt Osman used to sport the kind of beard that fleas dream of living in. That was then, of course, and this is so unbelievably now that Suede almost appear to have stopwatches ticking in their eyes. Coming on (or should that be "Coming Up"?) to "She", Brett looking every bit the pin-up star waiting to explode into supernova, the band defining "enthusiasm" with every note, Suede have never looked so current, so alive. It's been said already how much they've changed but, tonight, Suede seem to have stopped changing. They have arrived. You can tell by their bewildering confidence, by the way they don't appear to be trying, yet not one second falls short of electric.

"Trash" is no mere singalong it gets our bodies singing, every pore sweating out the melody, every muscle twitching out the beat. "By The Sea" takes the word "ballad" and hacks the word "lad" out of it, leaving something so pure and simple, the audience feels cleansed and perfume-free afterwards. Brett's voice having used "Animal Nitrate" and "The Wild Ones" to cut right through into our chests, circles round an untitled new song, deeper and deeper like a corkscrew, right through our hearts. This is almost surgery. We're being fixed.

Then it happens. Something "very special" is announced and someone very special arrives onstage to sing "Implement Yeah". It's a "Mark E Smith piss-take" Justine later tells me, which they used to play back in the days when she was a member of Suede. Tonight as she hollers through a megaphone, bopping about like Debbie Harry, "Implement..." drives Reading into a riot with it's heavy-on-riffs, light-on-mercy New Wave bite. What Justines appearence says about her love life God alone knows, but what it signals about Suede's current state is clear. This is a band so comfortable with their past - and, thereby, their present and future - that they have started to exorcise their demons by sharing a stage with them and hugging them silly. Remember? This is a band who have arrived.

They depart all too soon. Two B-sides and two more singles, then they're off. But, as I walk away, I catch the eye of one estatic fan so over come that her eyes have glossed over and the corners are filling up. See? I told you they'd be tears before bedtime.

by Robin Bresnark (Typed in by Mark Hurst)