Suede‘s Brett Anderson and Nadine Shah have teamed up with the Paraorchestra for a one off concert of covers including David Bowie, Echo & The Bunnymen and Mercury Rev.
The nine-track gig, dubbed ‘Death Songbook’, which will be streamed by BBC Cymru as part of GŴYL 2021 this weekend, also features Portishead‘s Adrian Utley on guitar and Seb Rochford from Sons of Kemet on drums.
The acoustic/electric set was recorded in a COVID-safe environment in January on the largest of Wales Millennium Centre’s stages and featured tracks by Suede along with Bowie’s cover of Jacques Brel’s ‘My Death’ and Echo And The Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’.
You can view a performance of Mercury Rev’s ‘Holes’ and the full setlist below.
GŴYL 2021 is a free to watch online festival weekend of music, comedy, and conversation which you can watch this Saturday and Sunday (March 6/7).
‘Death Songbook’ will go out 3.30pm GMT on Saturday and will be available for a total of 37 days here.
“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 [composer] Charles [Hazlewood] who I had also greatly admired from afar,” said Anderson.
“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.”
The full set list is:
‘The Killing Moon’ – Echo and the Bunnymen
‘Unsung’ – Brett Anderson
‘Nightporter’ – Japan
‘The End of the World’ – Skeeter Davis
‘He’s Dead’ – Suede
‘Wonderful Life’ – BLACK
‘The Next Life’ – Suede
‘Holes’ – Mercury Rev
‘My Death’ – Jacqueline Brel (David Bowie version)
Meanwhile, Suede recently postponed their ‘Coming Up’ anniversary tour, with the UK dates now set to take place in November.
Back in November the band called on their fans to submit voice recordings for their next record, detailing a list of instructions that included singing and shouting “along when we ask you to”.
“Everything you send in will be gratefully received. If you can do two or even three recordings, that would be even better,” the band further explained.
