The British guitar wizard Bernard Butler will probably always be best-known for his time in Suede, playing on that band’s classic first two albums. In 1994, Butler contentiously parted ways with Suede, and he’s done a lot of other things since then. He formed the duo McAlmont & Butler, which released two albums. Butler also made LPs with singers like Edwyn Collins and Jessie Buckley, and he worked with artists like Bert Jansch, the Libertines, Duffy, and Pet Shop Boys. Now, Butler has announced plans for his first solo album in 25 years.

Bernard Butler has only ever released two proper solo LPs, 1998’s People Move On and 1999’s Friends And Lovers. This spring, he’ll return with the new album Good Grief, recorded after months of weekly solo sessions in a rehearsal studio. Today, Butler has shared the album’s lead single and opening tracks, the warm and achy “Camber Sands.” Here’s what Butler says about the new LP:

For a good while, I was scarred, and I was scared. I was happily distracted and joyously involved with so much music. I realized just being there was more than I had ever hoped for. I gave a lot to other people but realized that my story was defined by what I was, rather than what I am. I set myself a modest commercial goal, an expectant creative one: Perform to 10 people without being bottled, then find 11 the next night. Thus began the undoing of my own embarrassment. I would write as I thought and sing as I wrote until the bottles fly. And so the songs arrived.

For years and years, I have drawn straight lines from North London to every coastline I could see. To life-worn Londoners, escape is the dream and return most likely. The story I found was not the sea but the journey. Camber Sands, Mersea Island, Dunwich, or a dozen more horizons of possibility, the sea and the seawalls, and the endless return to face the city. “Camber Sands” is a love song — we flee the past, the present, ourselves, to survive, to defy. The loneliest music of the resolute, the half-light, and the saddest tunes.

Below, check out “Camber Sands” and the Good Grief tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Camber Sands”
02 “Deep Emotions”
03 “Living The Dream”
04 “Preaching To The Choir”
05 “Pretty D”
06 “The Forty Foot”
07 “London Snow”
08 “Clean”
09 “The Wind”

Good Grief is out 5/31 on 355 Recordings.