A highly-anticipated collaboration album featuring between Suede guitarist Bernard Butler and South Wales songstress Catherine Anne Davies (aka The Anchoress) is due for release next week. Their new record In Memory of My Feelings, which had its original September release date pushed back, hits the shelves on Friday 16th October.
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.