Back on record – and back on form – Brett Anderson’s boys reinvigorate their early ‘90s indie-glam heyday

As per the cover image, Bloodsports finds Suede coming out fighting to resuscitate their career after ignominious 2002 flop A New Morning.

And a brace of tunes stacked with their signature spittle-flecked, fizzing guitars and doomy-glam fantasy, kickstarts a fightback of rare intensity.

Brett Anderson twists his iconic, angst-wridden yodels around drug-addled, neon lyrics floating above a bruised, gloomy undertow.

An opening salvo crackles with the band’s early energy, Barriers arching its poetic back to soaring guitar before current single It Starts And Ends With You lands a neon sucker-punch of anthemic gutter pop.

The druggily luxuriant, langurous Sometimes I Feel I’ll Float Away offers some of the album’s heaviest guitar, while disorientating choral echoes and tense violin fuel the paranoia of What Are You Not Telling Me?

That it approaches the best their back catalogue has to offer without sounding recycled or cliched is perhaps the most apposite testament to Bloodsports’ achievements.

4 stars