Album review: Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart

Best known for her acting, Killarney's Jessie Buckley showcases her singing abilities in an impressive collaboration with the ex Suede man 

Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler, pictured here on BBC show Later with Jools Holland. 

★★★★☆

Jessie Buckley’s most recent movie, Men, was a feminist horror rooted in British mythological figure the Green Man. Having been around for the glory days of Britpop, her songwriting partner, Bernard Butler (formerly of Suede), will know all about the chilling effect of arcane representations of Englishness (such as zip-up Parkas and songs featuring “Oi!” in the lyrics).

Their collaboration similarly ripples with unease and a feeling of unfathomable forces stirring just beyond the field of comprehension. It’s also a showcase for Buckley’s rich singing voice - already deployed to good effect in Glasgow-set country music drama, Wild Rose, and which here makes her sound a dead ringer for cult folk artist Laura Marling.

Buckley grew up in Killarney, while Butler’s family hail from Dun Laoghaire. And a sense of a lingering and rather ominous Celtic otherness illuminates opener the Eagle & the Dove, where Buckley’s voice swoops through as a melancholic caterwaul (“loss leads the way,” she protests) as multi-instrumentalist Butler conjures a folksy jangle in the background.

When movie stars make music, the results are typically more disturbing than the scariest horror film – as anyone who has encountered that new Johnny Depp single will attest.

But Buckley seems to the folk campfire born and on 20 Years A-Growing (with its staccato Nick Drake Guitars) and the stomping Babylon Days takes on the part of shapeshifter, vanishing into material piled high with angst, wit and quiet melancholy.

The truly wrenching moment comes at the end, as final track Catch The Dust finds Buckley brooding over the past (“I would like to catch the dust of the memory of a photograph) and wondering where the future leads and if it’s really worth the fuss (“will my life have been like a movie scene…or a tragedy?”). This is a dark and mysterious record that gives up its secrets reluctantly and which demands earnest engagement and a willingness to delve deep.