She and Bernard Butler – her recent fellow musician and the man who plays the current spectral piano – are recording a moody black-and-white video. When they are finished, collective voices declare: “So beautiful. he broke it! ” Buckley, 32, could be a 90s indie or grunge kid with her new short bob fasteners. He dives for a spasmodic hug after Covid, a lively, relaxed, selfless personality given to loud laughter. “I missed a hug!” erupts as our breasts are squeezed. Butler, 51, this May Day, but still has the extra floppy disk he had in the ’90s, offers a solid handshake, welcoming and intense. This is the day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses UN leaders, days after reports of massacres of civilians in Bukha. The words about Seven Red Rose Tattoos, written in 2021 before all this horror began, are now unbearably painful, but they also bring – as a song so often can – a sense of comfort. “Oh, completely,” Buckley nods, better known as an Oscar-nominated actor than as a deeply moving singer. “I had not sung this song for a year until today, and these lines… made me cry. That’s the magic with music, it can mean so many things over time. “ He sits on the studio couch next to Butler, once Suede, then a brief solo star at the end of the Britpop scene and has since collaborated with dozens of music stars. Seven Red Rose Tattoos comes from an amazing album they have made together, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart. “As artists,” he said, despairing of the ongoing massacre, “all we can do is express our feelings.” Buckley bolts upright back. “I believe in humanity,” she says provocatively – her conversation is full of this constant emphasis. “I believe in people. None of us would have stood up if someone had not lifted us off the ground, in the most abstract and also natural way, at certain moments in our lives. I have to believe in that. And I guess when you can influence a person with music or art or a hug, we have to keep these things. These are the things that will keep us healthy. “They do it for me anyway.” Award-winning ck Buckley with Eddie Redmayne at the Cabaret Revival in the West End. Photo: Marc Brenner They were unknown two years ago, along with Buckley’s manager who felt they were related. They hardly knew each other’s work: Buckley had loved Butler’s Old Wow Butler’s album produced by pop singer Sam Lee, Butler had loved Buckley’s enchanting rendition of Glasgow from Wild Rose on an American chatshow. Buckley’s Bafta, starring. as a former rogue country singer from Glasgow with wild dreams of Nashville glory. Since then, she has been a rising star in the galaxy, an unconventional presence in frequently disturbing dramas: an injured Chernobyl wife, a confused student in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a murderous nurse in Fargo. In 2021, she was thrilled as Sally Bowles at the Cabaret Revival in London’s West End (along with Eddie Redmayne as Emcee, the couple who won Best Actress and Actress at Sunday’s Olivier Awards) and a sexually charged Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Sky Arts with good friend Josh O’Connor. Then, The Lost Daughter brought this year’s Oscar nod, with Buckley being surprisingly authentic as a suffocating and sensual young mother, impersonating the newest version of Olivia Colman’s character. The spotlight threatens to overshadow even a collaboration as bright as that of Buckley and Butler, and when we are finally alone, we begin in a shaky way. Earlier, among her colleagues, Buckley had openly discussed the incident at this year’s Will Smith Oscars (consensus: a sad night for all concerned), but now, in the archive, she will not go there. “I do not want to give it any more weight,” he says, warmly but steadily, without creating titles that make the music disappear: “It’s impressive.” She had a wonderful evening anyway with her pink satin dress, which she spent mainly “at the bar”. She was so impressed when Coleman introduced her to Bill Murray, “I love you,” that she could not speak. “I put it completely!” He would prefer an Oscar night where “we could all wear overalls, have pizza and beer, this would be a great party”. Sitting next to her, constantly sliding down, Butler’s silent demeanor is boring thunderous, tolerating what he clearly believes to be irrelevant showbiz nonsense. I invite him in and ask him if he has ever worked with an Oscar nominee before. That’s not the right question either. “Usually I do not ask,” he mocks. I wonder if he finds the multi-talents of his last, extremely gifted partner, touching the outrageous? This funny idea is, it seems, even worse. “Honest?” considers. “We meet, we write songs, we judge each other for what we can create, in the purest way. We do not sit down with talent lists and write them down and think: well, I think we’re there now, are we going to write a song? We never talk about any of these things. We just did not do it. No. “Jessie:” And it’s wonderful! “ I wonder if they also believe that no one sings like Buckley anymore. They are both confused. “I have no idea,” says Buckley, while Butler says: “We just did not discuss it: again, this is magic right now. I’m not thinking: is Jessie’s voice following Ella Fitzgerald’s standards? Bernard Butler and Jessie Buckley. Photo: Eva Vermandel To my ears, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart may be the most moving musical collaboration in Butler’s life, luxuriously orchestral but so intimate that you can hear the very fingerprints on the acoustic guitar. This stunning scenery is both haunting and joyful, from Joni Mitchell’s opening echo in The Eagle and the Dove, to the uplifting male choir in Footnotes on the map, to the closing, with a subtle longing for Catch the Dust. Buckley’s lyrics tell human stories through visions of birds, beasts and water, stories of loneliness, remorse and determination, lost skin, loose buttons and the madness of being alive. Their connection was instantaneous. Buckley, from Killarney in south-west Ireland, the eldest of five in a busy and creative household (dad part-time poet, mom coach / harpist), had no idea Butler’s parents were Irish, from Dún Laha . The inspiration came not only through the music (notes were exchanged for Nina Simone, Beth Gibbons, Talk Talk, Patti Smith, Gram Parsons, Pentangle), but also painting, poetry, flamenco dance, caravan holidays in Ireland and a book in particular, by Maurice O’Sullivan Memoirs 1933 20 Years A-Growing, an ode to remote life off the Blasket Islands off the coast of County Kerry, Butler’s favorite book for 15 years and Buckley’s all-time favorite gran. You are asking for tremendous trust. I’m scared too. If [there’s] no fear, then you’re just jogging, right? Bernard Butler Buckley had seldom worked like them, creating something new out of nothing – Wild Rose’s soundtrack consisted mainly of covers and her performances in musical theater went far beyond Cabaret until 2008 on the talented show led by Andrew Lloyd Webber I ‘ d Do Anything. “I was scared, it was raw, it was revealing,” she says of her beginnings with Butler. “I was sitting on the floor of a man I had never met. “I never thought we’d even make a song, let alone an album.” “You are asking for tremendous trust,” Butler added of his lifelong collaboration. “I am afraid too. If [there’s] no fear, then you’re just jogging, aren’t you? “ It’s a miracle that Buckley had no time for music at all (he’s laughed, a “do it all” person), he also completed two interesting films last year, back to back: Men, a high-end horror film inhabited by menacing men starring (played by Rory Kinnear) and Women Talking (starring Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw and Claire Foy), the story of a Mennonite colony that was sexually assaulted. Instead of being tormented for months by scenes of toxic masculinity, she says she saw opportunities to learn and has been drawn into dark and even scary stories throughout her career. “Well, scary things are happening,” he notes sadly. “I am a very happy person, but when I want to understand something more, I am not afraid to go where it is needed. There are so many hoods around us that I want to know the belly of the beast. It’s all of us. “ Butler was a sensitive young man who found much of the ’90s toxic android: for him a boring, boring, medicated celebration of what he called the “rock’n’roll caricature” earlier this year. An amazing guitarist, he joined the newly formed Suede and frontman Brett Anderson at the age of 19 and left at the age of 24. After some bombing, top solo releases, he finally found his identity at the age of 30 as a creative foil worker, working as a producer, songwriter or guitarist. with artists from Duffy and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to Libertines and the Cribs. “I had a very high …
