SUEDE came to Westonbirt Arboretum on Saturday night on the back of a string of hit singles in the nineties and one of the most highly regarded comeback albums of 2013. What a shame the crowds didn’t come too.

The beautiful setting of the ancient forest, coupled with a gloriously sunny midsummer’s evening should have seen the venue packed with picnickers hoping to enjoy a fabulous evening of live music, but it didn’t matter how many times frontman Brett Anderson implored us to lay down our cheese and pickle sandwiches and come up front it seemed that this particular audience was just a little too laid back to get up and party hard.

Despite the best efforts of support acts The Hosts and Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, it still took a few songs before the crowd took to a really rather nonchalant Suede, who looked a little lost in the wide open expanse of Westonbirt with just a crumpled cloth backdrop for a set. Compared to Little Mix the night before it was all a little underwhelming.

However, the songs were amazing and Brett has lost little of the charisma that took him to the front pages of the music press a couple of decades ago, and as he threw off his restrictive suit jacket and started swinging his mic around we all knew exactly why we wanted to be here.

Hit tracks including ‘So Young’, ‘Filmstar’, ‘Metal Mickey’, ‘In Fashion’, ‘Electricity’ and ‘Beautiful Ones’ had the mainly middle-aged audience swaying and singing along, but something was wrong with the chemistry here and the next time we see Suede it will probably be back in some dingy London club that Anderson was trying to get us to imagine we were in.

Perhaps they had a touch of agoraphobia. Who knows? But the set, which was due to finish at 10.30pm, ended early after just one encore song; much to the disgruntlement of the crowd who were having a really rather lovely time.

The next Forest Live gigs take place in July, with performances from Boyzone, Deacon Blue and Katherine Jenkins.