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Paraorchestra: Death Songbook live review – bittersweet ballads with Brett Anderson and friends


Charles Hazlewood’s boundary-breaking ensemble guide the Suede singer and special guests through an elegiac evening grown out of the pandemic

Brel’s tune My Death finds Anderson, accompanied only by guitarist Remy, emphatically battling “the passing time” and channelling David Bowie’s and Scott Walker’s earlier renditions. Singer Skeeter Davis’s heartbroken 1962 plea to stop the clocks finds Welsh-Cornish singer-songwriter Gwenno trading regrets with Anderson while the Paraorchestra conjures a bittersweet waltz. The kaleidoscopic workout for Suede’s He’s Dead finds the Paraorchestra hitting a groove and tilting at the ineffable, its efforts underlining the importance of making a joyful noise while there’s still time.

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Brett Anderson