The London Suede: Manhattan Center Ballroom, New York NY

"THIS IS A boring old one," Brett Anderson says with a shrug, and then Suede ignite 'Animal Nitrate', a typically brazen concoction of straight-razor guitar, melodramatic melodies and seedy sexual posturing. The sold-out crowd, which has already been offering up flowers and stomping to a little-known B side, loses it completely for a song that wasn't even a single in America. The floor truly feels like it's going to collapse — 10 stories up from street level. Suede actually seem pleased to be in front of American die-hards and far away from the U.K., where the band had been busy grooming a replacement for the man who'd been Johnny Marr to Anderson's Morrissey, departed guitarist Bernard Butler.