JUST ANNOUNCED@buckleyxbutler UNPLUGGED + SIGNING

The vital folk duo of Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler will perform songs from their Mercury Prize shortlisted album ‘For All Our Days That Tear the Heart’, out June 17th via @emirecords.

TICKETShttps://t.co/ABeMIiRiku pic.twitter.com/aLZF2IfTiJ

— Rough Trade (@RoughTrade) August 18, 2022

Their album was nominated along with offerings from Little Simz, Sam Fender, Harry Styles, Nova Twins, Self Esteem, Wet Leg, Joy Crookes, Fergus McCreadie, Gwenno, Kojey Radical and Yard Act. Asked what it was about All Our Days That Tear the Heart that got them shortlisted for the prize, Buckley told NME: “I don’t think you can ever be objective from the inside out. It’ll probably be 20 years down the line and we’ll put the album on for the first time in 20 years and be like, ‘Oh, that’s what it was!’ But I don’t know – it’s nothing to do with me!”

In a statement reported by NME at the time of the release of the first single from the album, “The Eagle And The Dove”, the duo revealed the genesis of their collaboration: “It all started with a FaceTime call from Butler’s North London kitchen to Buckley’s mountaintop residence in County Kerry, with their friendship growing from an unlikely shared love of Killarney and the small island of Valentia where Butler would go on holiday as a boy.

The statement continued: “Buckley had been listening to ‘Old Wow’ by Sam Lee, produced by Bernard, in the downtime between rehearsals for the National Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet. Butler had seen Jessie perform a song on an American chat show in promotion of 2018’s Wild Rose”.

Talking about hearing Buckley singing, Butler told NME, “I remember clocking just how much character there was in her voice and how freely she expressed it.” The musician finished talking about the album, “More than anything, I wanted it to be joyous – properly joyous – because there is such joy in Jessie, there really is. In spite of the darkness and the intensity in these songs, I’m just flying when I listen back to them.”

Buckley chimed in: “Right now, I feel like I’ll never make another album again, because I can’t imagine another album happening the way this one did. It’s amazing that it even happened once. This obscure, organic, odd little thing that just found us.”

Butler and Buckley will also be playing at Whitley Bay Playhouse on August 25, tickets are available here.

Upcoming shows:
24/08/2022 – Rough Trade West – London
25/08 – Whitley Bay Playhouse – Whitley Bay

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It’s coming out on Oct 16th! Last orders for the deluxe vinyl bundle! We are now down to the last 25 remaining signed lyric sheet & vinyl bundles in the official Needle Mythology store. If you want one, get there quickly and preorder! Myself and @bernardbutlerofficial have both signed these lyric sheets which are exclusive to the official store and only come with the deluxe vinyl bundle. (LINK IN BIO)

A post shared by The Anchoress (@theanchoressofficial) on Oct 6, 2020 at 1:48pm PDT

Davies and Butler have drip-fed fans three singles from the new record over recent months: the piano-led ballad The Breakdown; Texas-esque pop rock number Ten Good Reasons; and the jangly, guitar-driven Sabotage (Looks So Easy) which feels reminiscent of early 90s Suede. The latter came with an innovative, lockdown-inspired video.

While it was recorded in just fifteen days, the record has been four years in the making. Butler told Louder Sound he’d even feared the album might not see the light of the day: “I’d got used to the idea that the record might never emerge. Occasionally, I’d listen to it on my headphones if I was on the bus or something, I always had the same thought, ‘I wish I could go to a record shop and buy this‘.”

Glynneath-born Davies is no stranger to a collaboration, having teamed up with compatriots Manic Street Preachers for the sweet duet Dylan & Catilin in 2018, and appeared on Simple Minds’ 2018 album Walk Between Worlds. Davies, who last week delighted fans with a synth-drenched rendition of the Chris Isaak classic Wicked Game, outlined her and Butler’s no-nonsense approach to song-writing and recording on her Instagram recently: “I’d like to think we naturally slid into a Morrissey/Marr style dynamic without ever really talking about it. Like much of how it was made, we just got on and did it without procrastination. Some days we were so prolific we would knock out 2 or 3 finished songs. That’s a rare thing in this industry.”

The Suede veteran has dedicated the new album to Mako Sakamoto, his former bandmate in The Tears. Butler, who has previously described Sakamoto as “my friend, musical partner and hero“, posted an emotional tribute on his Instagram account this week.

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