There can be something confessional about live performances that a studio recording can’t capture. There is a raw emotion in this version of Ben Howard’s ‘End of the Affair’ that leaves a lump in the throat, no matter how many times you hear it.
It perfectly captures the stickiness of heartbreak – the heartbroken, stuck replaying past moments, ‘The weight of your laughter / Alive in the hall’; as a careless world (and lover) moves on.
The lyrics are so carefully calibrated:
‘Now I watch her
Running ’round in love again
Now I talk about you
When I’m with our mutual friends’
For the singer, ‘slowed down’ in the treacle of grief, their interior pain is in jarring contrast to such polite chitchat.
Seldom has devastation sounded so beautiful.
