• News

• All

Mar 04, 2021 By Joey Arnone

BBC Cymru, the Welsh division of BBC, will be streaming the GŴYL 2021 festival this Friday and Saturday. The stream will feature a set of performances from Suede’s Brett Anderson, Charles Hazlewood, and Paraorchestra (the set has been titled Death Songbook). One of the performances, a cover of Mercury Rev’s 1999 song “Holes,” which features contributions by Nadine Shah and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, has been shared. Check it out below, along with the full Death Songbook setlist.

Charles Hazlewood speaks about the Death Songbook set in a press release: “It has been pure unmitigated joy putting Death Songbook together with Brett and Paraorchestra, if that isn’t a contradiction! I am British after all, and I’d say melancholia is our defining national characteristic: British people feel comfort in melancholy. Songs about death, the death of love, loss, anxiety, loneliness, they make us feel transcendent—and in a period of global anxiety, that’s a real balm.”

He continues: “It was incredibly challenging for so many reasons. An orchestra wants nothing more than to be close, as tightly packed as possible to find that collective sound. So, to be spaced out 2.5 metres away from each other playing socially distantly is hard. And of course, it’s a massive challenge to play such a set with no live audience, music doesn’t exist in a bubble, it’s an act of love and of communication. You would usually get a huge volume of emotive push back from an audience in such a set, and to have that whole element, that dimension, missing—really makes it more difficult to do, and to do with meaning.”

Anderson adds: “This was such a joyous project to happen amidst the gloom of January. I’d loved Nadine’s work since I heard “Fool” and she and I had spoken about doing something together for ages, as had me and Charles, who I had also greatly admired from afar. For this all to happen against the odds with those wonderful musicians from Paraorchestra, plus the talents of Adrian Utley and Seb Rochford, was just so lovely.”

Death Songbook Setlist: 1. The Killing Moon - Echo and the Bunnymen 2. Unsung - Brett Anderson 3. Nightporter – Japan 4. The End of the World - Skeeter Davis 5. He’s Dead – Suede 6. Wonderful Life - BLACK 7. The Next Life - Suede 8. Holes - Mercury Rev 9. My Death - Brel (David Bowie version)

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.