Say It With Garage Flowers

 

Only a year on from the release of their self-titled debut album, supergroup Butler, Blake & Grant are releasing the follow up – Murmurs is out this month on 335 Recordings.

Its predecessor was one of our favourite albums of 2025 and the new one will certainly be high up on our Best of the Year list come the end of 2026.

Murmurs sees the trio – Bernard Butler (Suede, McAlmont & Butler), Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) and James Grant (Love and Money) – reimagining songs from their respective back catalogues.

The first single, ‘Lonely Night’, written by Blake, initially appeared as a bonus track called ‘Dark and Lonely’ on Teenage Fanclub’s 2010 album, Shadows – on Murmurs, the trio reinvent it as an alluring folk-rock-psych tune.

There’s a stripped-back, soulful, slow and atmospheric take on Butler’s ‘Not Alone’ – the original, a lush and epic pop song, appeared on his 1998 debut solo album, People Move On – that album’s title track is also reworked for Murmurs and opens the record in a hauntingly beautiful fashion, with some impressive and delicate guitar work by Butler.

He also adds some exquisite electric guitar to a version of Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Planets’ – a gorgeous escapist ballad that’s about getting away from the city and heading to the Scottish Highlands.

Its theme perfectly suits the autumnal mood of the album, as does Grant’s ‘Winter’, with poetic lines like: ‘In the beauty of the storm, I wither / You could crack this stony sky with a single burning kiss.’

There’s a stirring and anthemic ‘Last Ship On The River’ – sung by Grant and originally recorded by Love and Money on the Scottish band’s 1994 album, Littledeath – and a moving version of his song, ‘Does It All Add Up To Nothing’, with soaring strings.

Butler, Blake & Grant formed when Scottish musician, Douglas MacIntyre, who promotes FRETS Concerts, invited them to perform a low-key concert in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, guessing that they would work well together.

The trio then performed all over the UK and recorded their critically-acclaimed 2025 album of original material at Blake’s home on the banks of the River Clyde, Scotland.

For Murmurs, the group reassembled at Blake’s to capture the original premise for the very early shows they played: three guitars, three voices, and selections from three impressive back catalogues.

On the 10-track album, we get three songs apiece from each member of the band, plus a cover version of ‘Me & Magdalena,’ which was written by Blake’s friend, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, for The Monkees’ 2016 reunion album, Good Times!

‘We recorded the album really quickly at Norman’s – he hasn’t got a studio. We plonk a computer on his dining room table and put some mics up – without headphones’

Murmurs was mostly recorded at Blake’s home, although some parts, like the bass and drums, were overdubbed at Butler’s studio in London.

“We just recorded really quickly at Norman’s – we banged it out,” explains Butler, speaking to Say It With Garage Flowers in early January of this year, shortly after he has played two solo shows in North London music venue, The Green Note.

“He hasn’t got a studio – we plonk a computer on his dining room table and put some mics up – without headphones. We just record the three of us playing the songs together, as we would play them live – that’s the main thing. I take the tracks to mine and add some touches, like piano, and then I spend about a month making a record out of it.”

Murmurs manages to evoke the same intimate and rootsy atmosphere as the group’s debut album – it’s a cosy, inviting and warm-sounding record, conjuring up images of log fires, drinking whisky, gazing out at stormy seas, walking under overcast skies in wintertime, and wearing big jumpers.

“The big jumpers are because Norman’s house is fucking freezing – he hasn’t got any heating!” jokes Butler.  “The album’s got that feel because the way we play live is relaxed and we’re seated – and the shows are supposed to be fun.”

Talking about the first Butler, Blake & Grant album, he tells us: “I think it sounds really good – it’s a nice, warm-sounding record, and it gave us an opportunity to write – it was almost like co-writing, but it wasn’t co-writing. When you’re in a co-write, you’re doing everything together, but we were writing the songs for ourselves – for a record that would work for the three of us. It was a good outlet for me to get on and just write some songs, which I hadn’t done since Good Grief [2024 solo album]. I really enjoyed that, I like the songs that I did and it pushed me onto the next thing.”

Q&A

It’s only been a year since the first Butler, Blake & Grant album, and now we have another one – you’re on a roll…

Bernard Butler: How it happened is we got asked to do a couple of extra tracks for the first album – Republic of Music wanted to do a giveaway, and so we did them. We recorded them at Norman’s, and then we said to ourselves, ‘Why are we giving these away for free? We give everything away for free these days…’, so we decided to hang on to them.

We were doing one of the tours when the album came out, and I was staying at Norman’s, so we thought: ‘Why don’t we just do a few more songs?’ And it was just like that. We had the idea of doing another album – we had three songs each and then we added ‘Me and Magdalena.’

The idea was that it was the songs that we were doing in the set, before we wrote any songs together, which we interpreted the way we wanted to. We just thought it was nice to record them the way that we’ve been playing them live, because that was quite different from the way they were done with the respective other artists and me.

The versions of your songs on the album are quite similar in style to the way you play them live in your current solo shows…

Well, that’s the nature of the set-up and it’s the way I’ve been playing for the past couple of years. If I had strings and a drummer and stuff like that, it would be a different story. So, yeah, they’re more or less in line… but with James’s and Norman’s harmonies, which are great.

There are some strings on the version of James’s ‘Does It All Add Up To Nothing…’

James did a version of that song on his own a few years ago with the Prague Orchestra, and he never used it – nothing came of it. So, he sent me the strings, and I extracted them and placed them in the background of our version, so we could use them.

‘Me and Magdalena’, which was recorded by The Monkees, was written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie…

Yes – he’s a friend of Norman’s. I don’t know him and I’d not heard the song. I didn’t know that Monkees record.

When I met Norman and James a few years ago, to do our first show, they said: ‘Oh, we’ve been knocking this song around – do you want to play it?’ I hadn’t seen Norman for years, and, because I hadn’t met James before, I didn’t want to say no.

So, we did a little rehearsal in Glasgow the night before the gig and then I went back to my hotel room, and I learnt the song overnight. We love it and we’ve played it ever since. It’s become our song.

I listened to it [the original] and worked out our version of it. I just made sure I had the chords and the structure, but I never listened to it again. It’s similar to the way I work when I produce somebody who’s made loads of records. When I met Mark Eitzel – I made a couple of records with him – he’d made 15 albums or something – and I knew a few things he’d done, but I didn’t know everything.

I thought the worst thing to do would be to pretend that I’d listened to all 15 albums – I wasn’t going to spend a week listening to all of them, because that’s not how you experience music. You have to absorb it in your own way, and like and dislike things.

So, I just said to him straight away: ‘I didn’t listen to any records. I’m just going to listen to what we do…’ That way I come with a blank canvas, and we can make our record, rather than me trying to respond to all his other music, because that doesn’t feel fair.

It’s the same with some of the other songs on the new record. I knew ‘Planets’ because I’m a huge Teenage Fanclub fan, but I didn’t know James’s songs, and I didn’t want to go hunting down the original versions and try to learn them, because it felt disrespectful. I thought it would be more respectful to listen to what he was doing in front of me and to make something out of it as the three of us. I don’t know whether they’ve done the same with me – they might have done. I think they probably have. We just play a song, regardless of the original version.

There’s a version of your song, ‘Souvenir’, on Murmurs – that’s a deep cut. It was a B-side of ‘You Must Go On’, which was a single from your 1999 album, Friends and Lovers, and it’s been part of your live set for a while…

Yeah – I’ve always really liked that song. It’s simple, and I really enjoy singing it. I’ve always played it with Norman and James.

You’ve got to remember that when I started singing with them, I’d only just started singing again on my own after a long time, and so I was really looking for things that were quite simple – that I could get across quite easily without being too complex. So, I was doing that song a lot to give me a bit of confidence, and I felt good about doing it.

I’ve always played it with Norman and James, and since then, I’ve done hundreds of shows on my own, and I now feel totally different about singing and my vocals.

 

I really like the version of ‘Not Alone’ on the new album…

I like it too. ‘Not Alone’ is a funny one, because when I originally did People Move On, it was seen as it was going to be the big hit single, and it wasn’t… I probably way overdid it for a start, but I always thought it was a good song, and I kind of left it aside for a little bit.

Also, when I did solo shows back in ’99 or whenever it was, they were with a band, and we were trying to replicate the record with a rock band… So, when I started doing the songs again on my own a few years ago, the first thing I did was to find words that I liked and to completely clear away all of the music – to forget everything – guitar riffs, string parts…

‘Not Alone’ is a funny one, because when I originally did People Move On, it was seen as it was going to be the big hit single, and it wasn’t…’

If there was a chord change I didn’t like, I would change it and the same with lyrics – if I liked a song, but there were a couple of dodgy words, I would change them. It was brutal, but with ‘Not Alone’, when I cleared away all the nonsense of the production, I really liked the lyric – it’s very autobiographical and representative of the passing of time between two periods. It has a real weight. I normally finish my solo set with it, and I just thought we should do it for our record.

 

Butler, Blake & Grant do a great live version of the McAlmont & Butler song, ‘Yes’, but it’s not on Murmurs…

No – I felt a bit precious about that one. I really like that record, and I like doing it because I feel like it honours the song. For people who come to see me, I’m happy to boast about it: ‘Oh, do you know this is my song?’ I’m proud of that record. I sometimes do ‘The Wild Ones’ by Suede too for the same reason. It’s not so much about performing it myself, it’s more about, ‘Yeah – this is mine as well. Don’t forget that.’

I like performing ‘Yes’ with Norman and James as well – I like the harmonies they do. Our version is completely different – it’s quite bluesy and stompy. I didn’t want to record it because I feels like it works live – it’s a moment when you’re in a room with lots of people and there’s an energy.

The nature of the new record is that it’s gentle and quite quiet – that’s the reason we called it Murmurs. It’s like little whispers and murmurs… ‘Yes’ just doesn’t fit into it. We do ‘Cinnamon Girl’ at the end of our shows too – that’s just a bit of fun.

What are your favourite songs by Norman and James that you play in the group?

On this record, my favourite Norman cut is ‘Lonely Night’ – I really love that. Part of the reason is because it’s the only occasion where I’ve been able to take a Norman Blake song and do exactly what I felt as a producer. I still haven’t heard the original.

Norman hadn’t recorded the vocal… I basically just recorded a backing track, and I put drums and guitars and stuff like that on it, and I sent it to Norman and said: ‘I have no idea whether this is going to work, because I don’t know what you’re singing, but I’ve just recorded some stuff on it to make it into this sort of slightly psychedelic piece…’

‘We truly feel Murmurs is a companion piece to the first album’

I just had fun with it really, and I enjoyed working without the vocals, and he just said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great.’ And when he sent me back the vocal, it fitted perfectly. It was just pure luck.

James’s ‘Winter’ is such a drop-dead brilliant song, and, again, I don’t know the original. When we’re playing together and I see ‘Winter’ is coming up next, I think, ‘Wow – that’s a great song.’ I look forward to it.

So, you’re playing some Butler, Blake & Grant shows in the UK in April and May…

Yeah – there’s a short run and that’s going to be it for the year pretty much, as I’m doing my own record and Norman and James are doing other stuff.

We truly feel Murmurs is a companion piece to the first album – you can put the two together and say: ‘This is what we did and that’s how the shows went…’ That’s what it feels like to me. There will probably be a bit of a gap after this.

Would you like to make another album together?

Oh, yeah. I’m sure we will, but I get an itchy bum, and I want to do my own record.

So, when will your next solo album come out?

Most likely early next year. If I could get a song out by the end of this year, that would be great. I’m doing the album at the moment, and I’m about a third of the way through. The biggest part of a record for me is not just the songs – it’s working out what I want to do. I’m not a group – groups set up in a rehearsal room and say, ‘We are a group – this is how we sound. Now let’s write some songs around our group…’

I never have to think that way – I could pick any genre or anything that turns me on at that point, or anything that feels right, but the hardest thing is to find that and to whittle it down.

It gets intense, as I work on my own 99% of the time. When I make music, there is no one to play it to and when I record something there is no one to say, ‘Well done – that’s really good.’ I don’t have an engineer or a group. The whole process can be quite exhausting but now I 100% know what I’m going to do and that’s good.

Murmurs is released on March 27 (335 Recordings).

BUTLER, BLAKE & GRANT LIVE 2026

April 22 – Kendal, Brewery

April 23 – Halifax, Minster

April 24 – London, Cadogan Hall

April 25 – Bradford-On-Avon, Wiltshire Music Hall

April 26 – Poole, St Peter’s Church

April 28 – Sheffield, Crookes Social Club