Taking a break from the day job in your early thirties to start up a music career may sound like a recipe for disaster, but then Jessie Buckley doesn’t have your average day job. The Oscar-nominated star of Chernobyl, The Lost Daughter and I’m Thinking of Ending Things spent a sizeable portion of her pandemic lockdown making an unexpected album with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, and last night in Camden’s ornate Green Note, the fruits of their collaboration received their triumphant public debut.
Buckley claimed to be nervous, but none of the hundred or so in attendance were buying it. Hands in her jean pockets, she was at total ease on stage, breezily regaling the audience with tales of her chance meeting with Butler in the mountains of County Kerry in 2019. And then, as tracks like Babylon Days and The Eagle & The Dove arrived, the room took flight, lifted by the self-assured power of Buckley’s deeply expressive vocals.
