I saw Bernard Butler play a blistering set at Celtic Connections

Butler, who is promoting his third solo album Good Grief, has been long associated with the festival, previously appearing at the Bert Jansch tribute and alongside Glasgow music royalty Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub and James Grant of Love and Money.

Good Grief is a sweeping album, filled with impressive string sections and accompaniment to Butler’s impeccable guitar playing and crooning vocals, but at Oran Mor he’s accompanied by just Caiman Gilmore on double bass. What might seem like a sparse line up, mixes to produce some sort of magic.

The former Suede man is widely acknowledged as one of the guitar greats of his generation, and there’d be an argument that he is thee great. Autograph, from 1998’s People Keep Moving is the real highlight of the night. He plays with the guitar in a way that few others would be able to. It’s all droning guitars and atonal punctuation building to an oppressive atmosphere, all while he stands mostly stockstill. Less appears to be more.

Butler clearly has a strong affection for Scotland, and especially its musicians - he collaborated with Edwyn Collins and says he was the de facto manager of his studio in Helmsdale whilst Collins recovered from a cerebral hemorrhage he suffered in 2005.

A lifelong Londoner, Butler introduces Camber Sands as a wish to move to places like Braemar in Aberdeenshire, which he visited late last year.

Later in the year, fans can look forward to a collaboration between Butler, Blake and Grant, and there was an airing of one of the tracks, The 90s, that he has penned for their forthcoming album during what he describes as a “sketchy” couple of nights with the pair.

Rather self-effacingly he asks that the album isn’t judged on his contributions but if this is the lower end of what fans can look forward to, then there’s a bounty of tracks coming from the collaboration.