Suede‘s Brett Anderson has released a cover of the Echo & the Bunnymen’s classic ‘The Killing Moon’ as part of a new project.
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Anderson has worked with Paraorchestra and their founder and artistic director Charles Hazlewood on ‘Death Songbook’, a collaborative 12-track album featuring original compositions and “re-imagining iconic songs exploring love, loss and transcendence” by artists including Depeche Mode, Suede and Japan. The album includes guest features by Nadine Shah, Gwenno, Seb Rochford of Sons of Kemet and Adrian Utley of Portishead.
Paraorchestra is the world’s only ensemble consisting of both professional disabled and non-disabled musicians playing an unconventional mix of traditional orchestral, acoustic, and electronic instruments and using assistive technology.
‘Death Songbook’ will be released on April 19 via BMG.
Check out Anderson’s cover of ‘The Killing Moon’ below:
Our mate @BrettAndersonHQ of @suedeHQ has just released a stunning version of ‘The Killing Moon’, the lead track from the new full-length album, ‘Death Songbook’ by Paraorchestra with Brett Anderson and Charles Hazlewood (featuring Nadine Shah and Gwenno) is available now! pic.twitter.com/cZnzmiYTv1
— Echo & the Bunnymen (@Bunnymen) February 29, 2024
“The Death Songbook was an idea Charles came up with during the bleak days of lockdown. As soon as he suggested it, I was sold,” Anderson said in a press release. “I loved the idea of curating a suite of songs about loss and sadness and regret. I’ve always found happy songs depressing, it’s been the murkier themes that have somehow sounded more joyous to me. Songs about doubt and fear and grief confront feelings we all struggle with, so to know that we are not alone in that fight can be quietly life-affirming.”
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Anderson helped to curate the album, the only rule being that all the songs have to have a relationship to death or the death of love.”
“So much of the greatest art, certainly from my point of view, is intrinsically melancholic,” said Hazlewood. “Music which is about death, or the death of love, about loss, about anxiety, there’s a transcendence in that music. My go to, whether I’m feeling happy or sad or somewhere in between, will be melancholy music because that’s where the catharsis is, that’s where art is most resonant.”
Most of the album was recorded live in an afternoon during lockdown, socially distanced across Europe’s largest opera stage – the Donald Gordon Theatre at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Three more songs were recorded in October 2022, when the project returned there for a live performance.
The tracklisting of ‘The Death Songbook’ is:
- ‘The Killing Moon’
- ‘Unsung’
- ‘Holes (featuring Nadine Shah)’
- ‘Nightporter’
- ‘She Still Leads Me On’ (live)
- ‘Wonderful Life’
- ‘The Next Life’
- ‘He’s Dead’
- ‘Enjoy The Silence’ (featuring Gwenno – live)
- ‘The End Of he World’ (featuring Nadine Shah)
- ‘My Death’ (live)
- ‘Brutal Lover’ (live)
The project is also sent to be brought to life in front of an audience for two shows at London’s Roundhouse and Manchester’s Aviva Studios on April 24 and April 26 respectively – find tickets here.