BC Camplight tickets and 2024 tour dates

Biography

Lost treasure needn’t be found in the distant past; the 21st century had artists that didn’t find their place before disappearing into the great wide yonder. Such as new Bella Union signing BC Camplight. The alter ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio released two albums, Run, Hide Away (2005) and Blink Of A Nihilist (2007), both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, investing buoyant pop tropes with wistful and pensive emotion, combining songwriting eloquence and a troubled soul prone to self-destruction. Christinzio certainly knew it – in 2012, he described himself as, “the guy who blew it.”

But this sublime, maverick spirit, with a matching high-pitched, keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection, has another chance.

It’s a new record, recorded on a new continent, after Christinzio followed the instructions of his first album title: he ran, he hid. Living in Philadelphia, Christinzio reckoned that he’d, “be dead or in jail if I stayed,” so figuring he had one last chance to make the record he’d always dreamt of, he moved to Manchester, England. He played his best shows there; he had friends too, prepared to provide shelter on arrival.

That was 2012. Three years later, and eight since his last album, How To Die In The North is that very record he’d always dreamt of – a richer, more dynamic and diverse take on his epic pop pizzazz and simmering balladry. It’s a particularly dark saga, absent of hope and self-belief. “It’s more or less a goodbye record,” Christinzio feels. “It covers the shit I did wrong, down to the literal stuff like, you should have gone to school, you pursued a relationship that was doomed from the start… a main theme is not being convinced there’s such a thing as love, at least in the long term. My first records were fairly hopeful and more playful, but this one’s desperate and damaged in many places.”

The title How To Die In The North is how Christinzio viewed, somewhat humourously, the mood of his mission. “There was a real Leaving Las Vegas vibe to my move to Manchester. I intended to get the record out of my system, the best I could possibly do, and then drink myself to death. I had so many regrets, like the shitty things I’d done to myself and to other people.”

The album was finished before Bella Union signed him, so Christinzio had no idea he’d even find a label, but he did have the committed involvement of producer Martin King, according to Christinzio, “a passionate, eccentric vintage gear collector” who ran a studio in a converted vicarage in Bredbury on the outskirts of Stockport. For two intense years, the pair “chipped away” at making a record, with Christinzio almost totally responsible for the instrumentation. “I wanted it to sound warm and inviting, but also partly like it was degenerating and even confusing,” he admits. “I wanted people to feel like I feel, so you can’t tell if things are scary or beautiful. The varying styles of songs mirror the extreme mental highs and lows I was going through.”