The Best of Bernard Butler Post-Suede

Suede: a retro-flection, FIRST INTERMISSION

After Suede, Bernard Butler racked up a number of high profile production credits and contributions for other artists on their projects, but what follows below are the highlights of his own musical output, starting with his first post-Suede music as part of McAlmont & Butler, through to his latest solo album, Good Grief, released in 2024.

“Yes” by McAlmont and Butler (1995)

“Yes” is what happens when two artists, both recently and acrimoniously departed from their former bands, come together to give the proverbial V-sign to detractors and dismissers. After leaving Suede, Bernard Butler bumped into David McAlmont, who had just left his former band, Thieves, right before they released their debut album. Seeing an opportunity for both of them, Butler shared the basis for what would eventually become “Yes” with McAlmont and suggested they work together. Using wall-of-sound production and styled after the classic pop of the 60s, “Yes” is undeniably “one of the most utterly wonderful records” either artist has ever been associated with. The McAlmont and Butler partnership dissolved due to creative tensions and personality clashes by the time they released the 1995 album The Sound of… McAlmont and Butler. They reunited in 2002 for one more album, aptly titled Bring It Back, and “Speed,” a single from a scrapped third album, in 2006. (Very little McAlmont & Butler is available on the DSPs, which makes me very thankful I sprung for an import copy of The Sound of… a number years back.)

More by McAlmont & Butler

“You Do” (1995)

“Falling” (2002)

“Bring It Back” (2002)

“Speed” (2006)

“A Change of Heart” by Bernard Butler (1998)

His guitar chops and songwriting acumen were never questioned, but everyone wondered in 1998 whether Bernard Butler could sing. Not very well, apparently, but he got there by the time his debut solo album, People Move On, was ready for public consumption. “A Change of Heart,” the album’s third and final single, has long been my favourite Butler solo track. Musically, it is very much a Butler tune, sweeping and majestic without feeling overblown, but his vocal performance and style bring it a humanity and humility that ground “A Change of Heart.” A second solo album, Friends and Lovers, followed quickly in 1999, and then a quarter-century gap before releasing his third, Good Grief, in 2024.

More by Bernard Butler

“Stay” (1998)

“People Move On” (1998)

“Friends and Lovers” (1999)

“I’d Do It Again If I Could” (1999)

“Camber Sands” (2024)

“Deep Emotions” (2024)

“Pretty D” (2024)

“Refugees” by The Tears (2005)

I will spend more time with Here Comes the Tears in a future intermission post, but no recap of Butler’s post-Suede work would be complete without mentioning his (so far) one-off album project with Brett Anderson following Suede’s hiatus in 2003. Though the Tears’ songs lack the bite and swagger of “Animal Nitrate” and “The Drowners,” Butler and Anderson fall into familiar roles like hand in glove, complementing each other on the single, “Refugees.”

More by The Tears

“Lovers” (2005)

“Thinking About a Friend” by Trans (2014)

I admittedly knew very little about Trans when I started compiling this list and listening to their two EPs, but thanks to a couple of key pieces from The Quietus and The Guardian, it’s all starting to make sense. In essence, Trans is an improvised band featuring Butler and Jackie McKeown of the bands 1990s and the Yummy Furs. The two guitarists play through different channels (Glasgowian McKeown on the left, Londoner Butler on the right), backed by a rhythm section playing in a separate room. Trans’s direct-to-tape style differs from Butler’s other collaborations, but if you’re into noodly krautrock with a dash of feel-good party tunes with one-line repeating lyrics, you’ll probably dig their 2013 debut EP, Red. Its more succinct cousin, 2014’s Green, features “Thinking About a Friend,” which features more fleshed-out lyrics.

More by Trans

“Jubilee” (2013)

“Dancing Shoes” (2013)

“The Eagle & the Dove” by Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler (2022)

Oddly, given that it is a Mercury Prize shortlisted album, I had no idea Butler and actress Jessie Buckley collaborated on the folk-inflected For All Our Days That Tear the Heart in 2022. Garnering high praise from the press and the aforementioned nod from the Mercury Prize jury, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart has some delicate and mesmerizing moments, most notably the single “The Eagle & the Dove.”

More by Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler

“For All Our Days That Tear the Heart” (2022)

“Footnotes On the Map” (2022)

“The 90s” by Butler, Blake and Grant (2025)

Butler, Blake & Grant is a supergroup (sort of), seeing Butler, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, and James Grant of the Scottish band Love and Money playing together on each other’s songs. There’s a lightness to their self-titled collection of tunes that comes from the casualness of the project, to the point where the differences melt away, the only distinguishing indicator being which of the trio is taking on lead vocals

More by Butler, Blake and Grant

“The Old Mortality” (2025)

“There’s Always Something You Can Change” (2025)

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