Mondo Bizarre Magazine

A Handful of Songs

words: Paulo Carmona (edited by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota

I knew that Bernard Butler was a guitar genius due to his creativity and originality.

I confess I didn’t knew he was such a communicator. He is very humorous, entertaining and truthful in his discourse, not even shying away from self-deprecation.

His pop rock is of a singular richness and his ease in transposing it on stage is, to say the least, appreciably comforting. I can feel colours from all shades of the rainbow in Butler’s songs, coated in intense, personal and introspective lyrics. It’s not hard to see yourself in one song or the other, and that’s why it’s easy to navigate his world.

In this concert at Casa da Música, Bernard’s first ever in Porto, he presented Good Grief, his new album in 25 years, gave us songs such as Deep Emotions and Pretty D, and obviously iconic songs from People Move On, such as My Domain, and the closing Not Alone.

From his collaborations with other artists he brought songs like Although (McAlmont & Butler) and Shallow The Water (Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler).

A solo concert so intimate, just the man and his guitar(s), that you could talk to the musician and sip the stories from his Gibson ES-355, which, in his hands, almost speaks.

I was delighted by the riffs, sometimes intense, sometimes soft, but all of them imbued with charismatic melodies. Butler is a storyteller and a speaker of the sensations that come from those stories. What’s impressive is the way in which those same sensations fit, in a perfect symbiosis, with the dynamics of his songs. It’s a gift.

I think that’s all I needed to see and hear on a pre-Christmas Sunday evening. It was indeed well worth leaving the house for!