In a crowded recording studio in London, a female voice unfolds from the speakers, filling every atom in the air. Beyond a glass wall, she is barely visible in the dim light, surrounded by three musicians on piano, trumpet and viola. The song, Seven Red Rose Tattoos, is sad and tainted with regret in the manner of vintage jazz; her voice is colossal and intimate, deep and lofty. We just don’t hear voices like this anymore, somehow reflecting Scott Walker’s fluid vibrato with the infinite richness of what Karen Carpenter called her “basement.” The crew and colleagues of the studio are impressed. “It set our homes on fire, watch my memories fade,” sings Jesse Buckley. “I have seven red rose tattoos, for each of us who has left / no longer a home country, I am in my quest to find love again.”
She and Bernard Butler, her recent music collaborator and the man who plays today’s spectral piano, are recording a grim black-and-white performance video. When they are finished, the collective voices declare: “So beautiful; smash it! “The 32-year-old Buckley may be an indie or grunge kid from the ’90s, with her new short bean, buckles stacked on top. Butler, “I’ve missed a hug!”
This is the day on which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed UN leaders, days after evidence of the massacre of civilians in Bucha. The words of Seven Red Rose Tattoos, written in 2021, before all this horror began, are now unbearably touching, but they also bring – as one song so often can – a sense of comfort. “Oh, absolutely,” nods Buckley, better known as an Oscar-nominated actor than a deeply emotional vocalist. “I hadn’t sung this song in a year until today and these lines … made me cry. That’s the magic of music, it can mean so many things over time. “
She sits on the couch in the studio with Butler, once a Suede, then a short solo star at the end of the Britpop scene and a collaborator with dozens of stellar musicians since then. Seven Red Rose Tattoos is taken from a stunning album they made together, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart. “As artists,” he despairs of the ongoing massacre, “all we can do is express our emotions.” Buckley bolts back upright.
“I believe in humanity,” she said defiantly, her conversation full of that firm emphasis. “I believe in people. None of us would have stood up if someone hadn’t lifted us off the ground, in the most abstract and physical way, at certain times in our lives. I have to believe in that. And I guess when you can influence a person with music, art, or a hug, we have to stick to those things. These are the things that will keep us healthy. They do it for me anyway. ”
Award winner … Buckley with Eddie Redmain at the West End Cabaret Revival. Photo: Mark Brenner
Two years ago, they were strangers, paired by Buckley’s manager, who felt they were kindred spirits. They knew almost nothing about their work: Buckley liked Butler’s Old Wow album by folk singer Sam Lee, Butler liked Buckley’s mesmerizing performance on the American chat show Glasgow by Wild Rose, Buffy-nominated Buckley’s lead role. a Glasweg singer with fierce dreams of Nashville’s fame.
Since then, she has been a galactic rising star, an unconventional presence in often disturbing dramas: a traumatized wife at Chernobyl, a confused student in Thinking Extreme Things, a murderous nurse in Fargo. In 2021, she excited as Sally Bowles in the renaissance of London’s West End cabaret (along with Eddie Redman as Emcee, the couple who won Best Actress and Actress at the Olivier Awards on Sunday), and sexually charged Juliet in Romeo and Juliet from Sky Arts, along with good friend Josh O’Connor. The Lost Daughter then won this year’s Academy Award, with Buckley stunningly authentic as a suffocating and sensual young mother playing a younger version of Olivia Coleman’s character.
The spotlight threatens to obscure even such a bright collaboration as that of Buckley and Butler, and when we are finally left alone, we start unstable. Earlier, Buckley had openly discussed this year’s incident with Will Smith’s Oscars (consensus: a sad night for all concerned) among her colleagues, but now, in the minutes, she will not go there. “I don’t want to give it more weight,” she says warmly but firmly, eagerly to create music-erasing titles: “It’s sensational.”
Anyway, she had a great evening in her pink satin dress, spent mostly at the bar; she was so shocked when Coleman introduced her to Bill Murray, “who I love,” that she could not speak. “I totally bottled it!” She would have preferred an Oscars night, where “we can all just wear tracksuits, drink pizza and beer, it would be a great party.”
Sitting next to her, sliding constantly down, Butler’s silent demeanor is tuned to thunderous boredom, tolerating what he apparently considers inappropriate nonsense from show business. I invite him in and ask if he has ever worked with an Oscar nominee. This is also not the right question. “I don’t usually ask,” he laughs. I wonder if he finds the multifaceted talents of his last extremely talented collaborator bordering on the scandalous? This hilarious idea seems to be even worse.
“Honestly?” he thinks. “We meet, we write songs, we judge each other for what we can create, in the purest way. We don’t sit down to write lists of talents and tick them off, thinking: great, I think we’re already there, will we write a song? We never talk about these things. We just didn’t do it. Do not.” Jesse: “And it’s great!”
I wonder if they don’t think anyone sings like Buckley anymore. They are both puzzled. “I have no idea,” Buckley said, while Butler said, “We just didn’t discuss it: it’s about magic again right now.” I don’t think so: does Jesse’s voice meet Ella Fitzgerald’s standard?
Bernard Butler and Jesse Buckley. Photo: Eva Vermandel
To my ears, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart may be the most influential musical collaboration in Butler’s life, lavishly orchestral, but so intimate that you can hear the fingerprints on an acoustic guitar. This grim soundscape is both haunting and joyful, from Johnny Mitchell’s opening echo of The Eagle and the Dove to the arousing male chorus in Footnotes to the final, delicately longing for Catch the Dust. Buckley’s texts tell human stories through visions of birds, beasts and water, stories of loneliness, pity and resolution, of discarded skins, unbuttoned buttons and the madness of being alive.
Their relationship was instantaneous. Buckley from Killarney, South West Ireland, the eldest of five in a tumultuous and creative household (dad is a part-time poet, mother is a vocal trainer / harpist), had no idea that Butler’s parents were Irish, from Dun Laohair. Inspiration is ignited not only by music (notes exchanged for Nina Simone, Beth Gibbons, Talk Talk, Patti Smith, Gram Parsons, the Pentagon), but painting, poetry, flamenco dancing, caravan holidays in Ireland and in particular a book. Maurice O’Sullivan’s 1933 Memoirs 20 Years A-Growing, an ode to remote living in the Blasket Islands off the coast of County Kerry, Butler’s favorite book for 15 years and Buckley’s grandmother’s favorite of all time.
You want a lot of trust. and I’m scared. If [there’s] no fear, then you just run, right? Bernard Butler
Buckley rarely worked like them, creating something new out of nowhere – Wild Rose’s soundtrack consisted mostly of covers, and her interpretations of musical theatrical performances go far beyond Cabaret until her breakthrough in 2008 on Andrew’s talent show, I’d Do Lloyd Webber Everything. “I was scared, it was rude, reprehensible,” she says of her start with Butler. “I was sitting on the men’s floor, which I had never met. I never thought we would even make a song, let alone an album. “
“You want an awful lot of trust,” Butler added of the lifelong collaboration process. “I am afraid too. If [there’s] no fear, then you just run, right?
It’s weird that Buckley had time to make music at all (she laughs, she’s a do-it-yourselfer), and also finished two intriguing films last year, back to back: Men, a high-concept horror film populated by menacing male protagonists (all played by Rory Kinnear) and Talking Women (with Francis McDormand, Ben Wishaw and Claire Foy), the story of a Mennonite colony ravaged by sexual assault. Instead of tormenting herself for months with scenes of toxic masculinity, she says she has seen learning opportunities and has been drawn to dark and even frightening stories throughout her working life.
“Well, scary things happen,” she said sadly. “I’m quite a happy person, but when I want to find out more, I’m not afraid to go where I need to go. There is so much deception going on around us that I want to know the beast’s belly. It is in all of us. ”
Butler was a sensitive young man who found much of the ’90s to be toxicly masculine: a boorish, drunken, narcotic celebration of what he called a rock’n’roll cartoon earlier this year. An amazing guitarist, he joined young Suede and frontman Brett Anderson at 19 and moved away at 24. After several bombastic solo releases of ups and downs, he finally found his identity in his 30s as a creative foil working as a producer. , songwriter or guitarist with artists ranging from Duffy and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to Libertines and the Cribs.
“I had a high …
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