Suede's Brett Anderson has always admitted his debt to David Bowie, but has often appeared to take homage to the Thin White Duke a little too literally. Bowie professed his bisexuality in 1974; when Suede started Anderson claimed to be a "bisexual who's never had a homosexual experience". Bowie ended up addicted to cocaine, Anderson to crack cocaine; it is as if the kid from the suburbs had taken Bowie's Aladdin Sane era cry of "Crack, baby, crack!" as a pharmaceutical instruction.

Three years on from the depths of his addiction, Anderson is not only clean, but reinventing himself as a singing, dancing and actually highly camp icon. He waggles his bottom outrageously, uses the microphone stand as a phallic extension and does things with his arms usually associated with wind power and Pop Idol formation dancing. You can almost hear older Suede fans thinking: "This is Brett Anderson?!"

Perhaps Anderson has realised that his health and happiness are more important than becoming a lad insane. Opening song Simon reeks of Bowie's early-1970s aftershave, but Anderson seems at ease with himself and all the better for it. The career pressure may be on (A New Morning, Suede's much-vaunted drug-free "positivity" album, stalled at 24), but he doesn't show it, grinning his way through a succession of perfectly executed moves.

Anderson's athletic performance is a spectacle, even a miracle, but, worryingly, he's carrying the band. With Bernard Butler long gone, Neil Codling now departed and guitarist Richard Oakes still looking like the young hopeful who won a competition to join Suede, the singer desperately needs a foil. It takes all Anderson's best mic-twirling efforts to get the band through lumbering efforts such as Roxy Music pastiche Streetlife, and the set is disturbingly high-paced, as if designed to cast off the old, morose, drug-fixated Anderson. During old favourite So Young, he doesn't sing the narcotic line "Let's chase the dragon", letting the crowd do the dirty work.

In general, early songs such as Metal Mickey and Animal Nitrate trounce the later ones, but new tunes Obsessions and Oceans emerge as the best songs of the night. The latter, a dissection of a stagnating relationship, is sung with real conviction. A transitional period for Suede, but perhaps the real Brett Anderson isn't such a bad bloke after all.

· At Northumbria University, Newcastle (0191-227 4757), tomorrow, then touring.