Lee Hazlewood

“I’ve never sang this at a show before,” Lee Hazlewood drawls, in his sub-sub-bass, 40-Marlboros-and-four-fingers-of-Scotch rumble. “I didn’t think I was old enough,” he continues. “But you can bet your sweet bippie I’m old enough now.”

Pushing 70, at least, perched on a high stool in a baseball hat, cowboy boots and sunglasses, he certainly is old enough – and as such, the evening has about it a hint of Vegas dinner-theatre, if an unusually moving one. His arrangements, played by moonlighters from The High Llamas and Stereolab (all joyfully beaming as if their Christmases have come at once) are full of happily gauche synthesiser mischief – culminating in the wine-bar boogie-woogie of ‘For My Birthday’, which goes so far as to feature synthesised female backing singers.

But as ever, the slower, darker numbers, are the ones that stun, where his still-faultless gift for profound tenderness mixed with self-slaying black humour is best revealed. It’s breathtaking.