Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler have released ‘Footnotes on the Map’, the fourth song to be lifted from their eagerly-awaited debut album For All Our Days That Tear The Heart. Destined to become a live favorite, it’s a spirited and irrepressible track that builds from tender beginnings to a euphoric crescendo. Listen HERE.
The opulent richness of Jessie’s lower register, redolent of Karen Carpenter at times, commands the opening bars. Then her voice floats majestically over the tidal push and pull of the song, leading us through the storm like a beacon. Through the peaks and troughs comes the call-and-response, performed on the track by Bernard Butler and guest vocalist Sam Lee.
“There’s no fear without courage,” she sings as each line is repeated back to her: “A sense of what’s left behind or to come / Just adrift in a moment / Afloat in the storm.” Those voices converge alongside the string section, marshaled by the brilliant Sally Herbert, effectively launching Jessie’s hard-won love lessons into the blue.
The song was inspired in part by the historian Robert McFarlane, who writes about the way walking reinforces our spiritual connection to the land around us. “In Aboriginal lore,” said Bernard recently, “there’s a belief that people mapped their immediate environment in song. Each step was a note in a song that represented a journey. And that’s a hugely powerful idea.”
The Academy Award-nominated actress and singer, and the Brit Award-winning producer and musician, recently announced another live show at Lafayette in London on Fri June 17, which sold out quickly. It follows their debut live show at the Green Note in Camden last month which received rave reviews including five stars from the Telegraph and the Evening Standard and four stars in the Times.
More dates will be announced soon. Meanwhile, ‘Footnotes on the Map’ was one of the featured songs when they appeared on Later with Jools last Saturday. You can watch both performances here.
For All Our Days That Tear, The Heart is released on EMI Records on 17 June 22.
Album tracklisting;
01 – The Eagle & The Dove
02 – For All Our Days That Tear The Heart
03 – 20 Years A-Growing
04 – Babylon Days
05 – Seven Red Rose Tattoos
06 – Footnotes On The Map
07 – We’ve Run The Distance
08 – We Haven’t Spoke About The Weather
09 – Beautiful Regret
10 – I Cried Your Tears
11 – Shallow The Water
12 – Catch The Dust
Keep up-to-date across socials:
Instagram // Twitter // Facebook
