Peter Straker Sings Brel – Live at Zédel

Peter Straker Sings Brel – Live at Zédel, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Peter Straker returns to Zédel, paying tribute to Belgian songwriter and singer Jacques Brel whose compositions have been described as literate, thoughtful and very theatrical. In fact, the words often come across as poetical, although Brel always denied he was a poet.

And Straker is unquestionably the finest interpreter of Brel’s songs. He does not just sing the words, he enacts them and, at times, inhabits the lyrics. His dramatic delivery style is full of passion and power, even in the softer numbers.

Not for him a gentle start to his programme with a slow build up. No! He takes the stage and plunges into his opening number, ‘You’re Not Alone’, with full power that fairly crackles with high energy.

Brel’s love of Belgium is expressed in many of his songs; the hymn-like ‘Flatlands’, being one, is delivered with a background noise of the sea. Sea noises also accompany ‘Amsterdam’ as the number gives a vivid picture of the port and rancid sailors who inhabit it. Straker’s delivery is enhanced by his swaying dancing movements.

Comedy features in ‘Middle Class’ and ‘Madame’, where the audience is asked to join in the choruses, and in ‘The Drunkard’. The latter is one of the lesser-known pieces that Straker places amongst the Brel classics, as are ‘It Hurts To See You Cry’ and ‘I’m Here’.

Much of Brel’s work is dark and personal with ‘Next’ a good example. It’s frenzied declamatory style describes his conveyor belt-like journey through the army’s medical inspection and its mobile brothel. A gentler treatment is given to ‘Sons Of’, a lament on war and its waste of life.

Death features in other songs, notably ‘Funeral Tango’ where he cynically visualises his own funeral and berates the hypocrites attending.

With most of the songs being delivered forcefully, with lyrics being roared and spat out, it makes one wonder if Brel was not the punk of his generation.

To close the show, Straker chooses two of Brel’s most popular songs, the jaunty ‘Jacky’ and the emotional ‘If You Go Away’ which he wrote at the age of 18 for his first love.

For his encore he climbs aboard Brel’s ‘Carousel’ with its memories of fairground rides – a difficult song where the words get faster and faster as though the fairground ride is out of control.

As Straker takes a breather between some of the highly-charged numbers, he engages in banter with his musical director and pianist Gulliver Ralston and drummer Charlie Brown. Not all of it satisfying – a lot of it contrived and unfunny.

However, it’s a small price to pay to hear Brel’s songs delivered by a master.

Barrie Jerram