Paraorchestra and Brett Anderson – The Killing Moon Review

Orchestral numbers, Suede frontmen and Echo and the Bunnymen covers. What more could you want from a sudden release which slipped the radar? A classic bit of post-punk power from Ocean Rain fits the vocal range Brett Anderson has offered listeners for the better part of thirty years. Where the original piece relies on the monotone daze Ian McCulloch is gifted with and the maudlin experiences of its instrumental flourishes, Anderson and the Paraorchestra take to furious strings and weathered emotions with this cover. With an orchestra at play the immediate stretch of instrumental depth is attempted though turns the heartbreak of The Killing Moon into a groove-adjacent murder mystery soundtrack piece. 

It fits neatly enough. Those soft strings come into play as Anderson develops those thick and thin tones, the crushing realities which lead us to poor decisions. The Suede frontman’s vocal work is expectedly effortless, a wonderful assessment of The Killing Moon is almost entirely dependent on his flourishes. Give it a little time to settle and The Killing Moon soon becomes a warm experience which maintains its post-punk tone. Where its energy may change in those opening strokes it is more because Paraorchestra hopes to cement its stylings than anything reductive. Those pangs of struggle in the face of elegance and instrumental grace are not lost on the Paraochestra who give the track time to breathe in Anderson’s capable range. In turn, a solid rendition of a classic track cementing its place in British music comes through.  

Heavy percussion towards the end marks a great release of emotional outpouring away from the heavy lifting Anderson performs in the build to it. Before long it ebbs away, petering out with the slow drones of quieting instrumentals. It works with a chilling effectiveness not found on the original though there is no reason to draw the McCulloch version to a close. Those are the benefits of studio recordings, and though the Paraorchestra finds itself unable to recapture the sharp logistics of a track which feels sharper and stylish on every listen, it does well to pay tribute and selects the right vocalist for the job. Anderson is not adjacent to McCulloch but the pair will rightly be remembered for their cultural observations, the filtering of it through exceptional writing. Like Bob Dylan with Paul McCartney, the subversion and revitalisation of one artist to another feels natural on The Killing Moon.  

Conductor Charles Hazelwood does well to reign the orchestra in and fire through those flutes at the right moments. Anderson becomes the core of a track which needs his repetition of “give yourself to him” to carry on the rest of the work. It marks a reasonable success and the weight of the track rests with a more than capable frontman who soon ducks out to bring out the latter half of percussion wonders. The Killing Moon is an intense song but also a fixated view of longing, an occurrence of tragedy and how we respond to it. Covers will hope to match the tenderness, and this does, more because of Anderson than anything else.