TRACK REVIEW: BC Camplight - Born to Cruise

TRACK REVIEW:

BC Camplight

Born to Cruise

9.8/10

The track, Born to Cruise, is available from:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3VP2RzBRB3KqEn04xkwiH1?si=q3g8s-R4SZarYpYz6D6eNw

The album, Shortly After Takeoff, is out now. Order it here:

https://bellaunion.ochre.store/release/167312-bc-camplight-shortly-after-takeoff

RELEASE DATE:

24th April, 2020

GENRES:

Indie-Rock, Lo-Fi

ORIGIN:

New Jersey, U.S.A./Manchester U.K.

LABEL:

Bella Union

__________

I have a lot of affection for…

PHOTO CREDIT: Robin Pope

artists putting out albums right now. So many musicians would have had their albums ready a while back and, not anticipating a lockdown, they would have been planning to promote quite heavily and tour off of the back of that. I know some artists are pushing releases forward, as they want to give fans something whilst they are in lockdown – Dua Lipa and Laura Marling did just that. I do think that it is commendable artists are putting albums out when things are very strange, and they cannot promote it as they normally would. One of the good things is that record sales are doing pretty well. A lot of music stores are seeing large sales at this hard time; maybe more people are buying physical copies than they normally would. Though streaming is down a bit, but I do think there is an appetite for music now. We all want something to distract us and keep us company but, more than anything, I feel music is speaking in a way it did not do before lockdown. That might seem strange, but I am hearing of people finding something in music that they did not get a few weeks ago. BC Camplight (Brian Christinzio) is someone who might not have been plotting a world tour just yet, but he would have assumed that he’d have his album out there and people could go to record shops and things would not be like they are. I feel Shortly After Takeoff is one of the best albums of this year, and it has picked up new power and meaning because we are in lockdown. That might sound strange, I know. The songs, on their own, are incredibly good and powerful. Right now, so many of us need a balance of the upbeat and personal; we are looking to music to give us answers and fulfil the soul; we want it to go deep and do something extraordinary.

That is what BC Camplight’s fifth studio album has done. I have read reviews of the album, and it is being talked about as a masterpiece – that is no exaggeration. I will not review the whole album, as I cannot do justice to every song if I only write a few lines on them. Instead, I have selected a track that means a lot to me, and I want to investigate BC Camplight from a number of different angles. Before I get there, I want to spend a moment discussing the sheer quality of music we have seen in lockdown. I am not saying they are related, but some of the finest albums we have seen all year have come since the end of March. Between Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud, Laura Marling’s Song for Our Daughter, Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters and BC Camplight’s Shortly After Takeoff, it has been an exceptional last few weeks or so. I am not sure what other albums are out in the coming weeks, but we have been treated to some wonderful music. I feel, as I said, music has been giving so many people hope and substance when we do feel very weird and unsure. I have been following BC Camplight’s music for a few years now, and I have always been amazed at his originality and quality. The songs on Shortly After Takeoff take him to new heights, and there is nobody in the same league as him. I want to look back a few years and show you when Christinzio came from and what he had to overcome to get where he is today. I will talk more about Manchester – where he is based – in a bit but, as he explained to The Guardian, he was in a very desperate place:

“Back in 2013, Brian Christinzio gave an interview to a local newspaper in which he declared: “Manchester saved my life.” He wasn’t speaking figuratively. Before moving to the UK in 2011, New Jersey-born Christinzio’s career as singer-songwriter BC Camplight had ground to a halt following two acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful albums. He’d lost his record deal with One Little Indian, succumbed to drink and drug problems and found himself battling depression while living in a disused church in Philadelphia. His friends had long since abandoned him – fed up with what he describes as his lies, his unreliability and his dubious habits. He started to think he might not make it out alive.

“I can’t overstate how bad my life in Philly had gotten,” he says now, adding that even if he’d survived, he would have ended up “in a real bad way … either a full-blown homeless mess or doing some seedy job like singing the national anthem at cockfights”.

And then? And then things went wrong again. Earlier this year, Christinzio was told that he was barred from the UK after overstaying his visa. He was forced to cancel tour dates, reschedule his forthcoming wedding (Manchester had also helped him find a fiancee) and relocate to Paris, where he awaits the results of an appeal.

Christinzio’s side of the story is as follows: he originally entered the UK on a business visa before injuring his foot so severely that a blood clot formed in his leg. “I couldn’t put my ankle down for four months,” he says. “It still looks like fucking ground meat.”

He says that he notified the Home Office and that it understood the situation, but that he was subsequently admitted to hospital and told by “every doctor in the fucking world” that he shouldn’t get on a plane. He delayed his exit further, which caused the Home Office to refuse his visa renewal request.

“I get that, by the rulebook, I overstayed,” he says, admitting that his isn’t exactly a typical case. “I guess there aren’t many people who lived in Philadelphia, ruined their life, then came to Manchester and got a record deal”.

Forgive me for screwing with chronology a bit, but I want to cover some very specific things and, at this point, I want to discuss his previous studio album, Deportation Blues. This was one of 2018’s best albums and, at that point, it was his most impactful and strongest effort. One of the best things about BC Camplight is the music evolves and you never get two albums that sound the same. Deportation Blues was a bit of a change from 2015’s How to Die in the North. When speaking with Too Many Blogs in 2018, he was asked about the new album and its new sound:

“Deportation Blues might come as an exciting change to people who have heard your earlier releases. Why did you decide to go in the direction you did?

As you may have heard, I was deported from the UK 2 days after my last record came out. I am an American and had been living in the UK whilst making my previous record. I was unable to leave the country due to a leg injury so I filed for an extension whilst in the country. I received a letter back stating that I was being deported and banned from the country. So my last record campaign was more or less shelved. I managed to get back into the UK by becoming an Italian citizen. SO, my path back to sanity and my music for that matter has been unbelievably stressful. When I arrived back in the UK I was a mess. I had lost any sense of whimsy I had left. I was angry and vengeful. I decided to write this record and record it through this lens. I had no interest in making sense, in being on the radio, or adhering to the pop sensibilities I formerly had. I wanted the music to sound cold and urgent. This is where “I’m Desperate” came from.

What can people expect from the album?

Well, if you want to feel good don’t buy it. It’s not a downer but it is really a journey through calamity and stress. I span genres wildly in an attempt to reflect uncertainty. People seem to be loving this one. Maybe it’s no coincidence I’m getting this response the minute I abandoned all consideration for the listener”.

I will bring things forward to now and, in the past two years, I think the life of BC Camplight’s hero has changed. I will discuss his struggles of the past, but whilst things might not be a lot happier than they were, I do think things are more stable than they were a few years ago. That said, BC Camplight is still keen to shine a light on some of the darker and more challenging aspects of life/the world. He talked to Back Seat Mafia about his latest album’s direction:

“The press for the album describes it as an examination of madness and loss. The world seems to be in a bit of a crazy place at the minute so do you think that this album has come along at a timely moment?

Hopefully. Then again the last album seemed to come around at the perfect moment and it didn’t exactly go to number one. This album is much more inward looking. This year has sort of been a perfect storm of darkness with me. After my dad died, I was on tour supporting “Deportation Blues” a lot so I didn’t have any time to deal with it really and then I got done touring and wanted to make this record, everything just started to hit me. My brain doesn’t necessarily react to things in a healthy way. I just started getting all these awful symptoms that I see to have back when I was about 27 or so. Lots of red flags. I noticed myself starting to do weird things and acting in weird ways and I thought “Oh shit, I’ve been sort of dreading this moment and was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to be able to get this record out but I guess something in me kind of enabled it to happen.

One of the most common observations from reviews around Shortly After Takeoff is how BC Camplight has created this very textured and diverse albums. One does not just get songs that sound the same: instead, there is a shift in styles and themes as we move through the record. It is a fabulous thing and, in the same interview, he was asked about growing ambition and experimentation:

You’ve always used really interesting sounds and textures and they seem to have got progressively more and more interesting as you’ve released albums. You seem to have really gone for it on this one big-style. Was there something different this time around?

In some ways, the record feels like it’s more lyrically dense and where I was trying to not have the music compete with it. There are people like Richard Dawson where his stuff is so lyrically dense that you can hear him scaling back the production so as not to overwhelm things. There were parts where I had to do that. I think I wanted the sounds that were there to be a little bit more bold. As I’m getting older I’m getting more and more bored with being playful. I don’t have a lot of hate in my heart but I have an active disdain for it being 2020 and there still being twee Indie bands. I’m listening and thinking ‘what are you doing, can’t you tell that the world’s fucking on fire?!’ So I don’t have a lot of time for being whimsical or cute anymore. I want to sound a little bit more desperate and a little bit more immediate.

When you listen to your songs and you listen to the music and then listen to the lyrics, there is some really interesting juxtapositions. There’s a kind of black comedy and tales of mundanity that runs right through a lot of this. Do you think that stuff tells a better story than trying to aim for some huge, epic sweeping storytelling?

Yes. I’m not really great at analysing my own stuff but I would say I enjoy black comedy. If you don’t overly draw attention to the fact that it is a funny line or a ridiculous situation. It’s almost like delivering the lines from the movie the Naked Gun or something. Those line are so fucking funny ‘cos they’re so serious. Because the guy saying it is saying it as if he’s in a 1950s detective movie. I think there’s a little bit of that in my music but I also don’t gravitate towards grand, maudlin themes. I think that they’ve been done to death. I think the wider the net you cast the shittier the fish you catch. I just don’t like being broad. It’s probably a detriment to my bank account as I’m sure I could have written a couple of big love songs by now. I had this conversation with my mom “Why don’t you just…” and I’ll say “Mom, you just don’t get it” and then she’ll say “Why don’t be a piano tuner” and I’ll say mom “I’m playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire, I’m doing something right”.

I have discussed a lot about his previous albums and rise to now – with the help of interviews and quotes -, but I feel it is important to look at where BC Camplight came from. Whilst current environment and situation enforces a lot of what musicians do and how their songs will sound, upbringing and early experiences with music are crucial. For me, I think music came into my life when I was a few years old, and the first sixteen-eighteen years of life was when I really absorbed music. I listened slightly less when I was nineteen or twenty, but I think that was something to do with the curiosity I had when I was younger and the type of music that was being released. Maybe things have changed since 2015 but, when he spoke to The Guardian then, he explained how music was a huge influence up to a certain point; from then, new music has not played a huge role:

“[Childhood] was the only time I was ever really, really into music,” he says. “Since I turned 20 I no longer listen to music. At all. Nothing. I don’t even have an iPod or CD player.”

Really? Why not?

“I don’t know. There are some things that I can’t listen to … especially when I’m not in a stable place in my mind, for some reason music angers me. Especially if it’s somebody showing me a new band. I’m just like, ‘Oh my god it’s terrible, how did these people ever get record deals? And I’m not even allowed in the goddamn country, ARGH!!!!’”.

I don’t know too much about the man behind BC Camplight but, having read quite a few interviews with him, I feel like I have got to know where he came from and what he has had to face. I wanted to bring in another interview, because it really interested me; seeing how BC Camplight discussed his relationship with reality and how he thinks. In this piece with The Line of Best Fit, he talked about the nature of reality and a recurring dream he has:

“As an artist I think it is crucial to stretch the tether to your reality. You will know when you are pulling too hard and then you ease it back. This awareness of something existing beyond what I can witness has always made me want to make contact with it through sound. I want to be a music medium. To what exactly? Fuck knows. But I know I have no interest in spending the rest of my career writing exclusively about earthly relationships.

I began writing music around the age of 16. I was having my usual nightmare, the ghost of The Elephant Man was trying to kill me. I was jolted awake by an enormous explosion coming from down the street. I said out loud "Good god!". A voice said as clear as day "God is dead". I bolted down the stairs to where my parents were still up and watching TV. Of course they heard no explosion. Of course I had dreamed the entire thing. Right?

Uninterested in returning to the bedroom where John Merrick was surely awaiting me, I took comfort in the family piano. I wrote a song called "Good God". It was the first time I married this ever-present fear to my talent for music. The two got along right away. Sometimes I hit a chord and my fear is usurped by a beautiful sadness. I think similar to the sadness lost souls must feel. Sometimes a melody feels like It's holding my hand, holding a machete in the other hand while it chops the impeding brush and guiding me to some sort of undiscovered reality”.

I said, earlier in this review, how I would talk about Manchester and how it has been a bit of a lifeline for BC Camplight. I was actually going to move there myself a year or so back but, because of one thing or another, it did not work out. I got a really special feel from the people; how friendly and welcoming they are, and the sort of instant connection one can get from Manchester. For artists, the local scene is invaluable regarding gigs and inspiration. It is clear that, when BC Camplight was living in America, he did need some sort of salvation or escape. Though he has did face deportation issues and had to come back from that, it does appear that Christinzio is settled now and appears to have found his home.

That said, I have not checked whether he is lockdown in the U.K. or the U.S. – whether he headed back there before this all started (I think he is over here). There was a moment in his life when things did turn around and, as he told The Quietus in 2015, Manchester has played a very big role in terms of his songwriting:

“How did you turn it around?

BC: There was a point where, and it was as bad as it sounds, I was squatting in a church in Philadelphia and I running electricity through the wall so I could get on my computer. I was lying there one night and a fan in Manchester Facebooked me asking if I was ever going to record anything again. We messaged back and forth and he suggested I come to Manchester. I had always had a pretty good time when I toured there so about a week later I just showed up. I had no plan - the fan set me up with an apartment - and had literally no idea what I was going to do. I knew no one except him and I'd only met him twice. So, the fact that we are here now and my record is out and people seem to be into it is very, very surreal to me.

What impact has relocating to Manchester had on you as a songwriter?

BC: The city has been a huge influence on me. I wrote all the songs in Manchester. I haven't had a bad day since I've been in Manchester. It was about being here and finally having a sense of newness, which I hadn't had in years and years. I was excited. When I'm down, I'm different to other songwriters - I don't write. I need to be excited and feel that I have something to prove. Once I got here, I just felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off me and I slowly started to think that I had something really good in my head. Nothing had been in there in years. I visited Eve Studios [in Bredbury] on a tip from a friend and I was messing around on a piano and a guitar. Every time I started to play, things started gushing out of me. It was completely effortless, as if someone had unplugged a seven-year blockage. The songwriting wasn't a labour-intensive thing at all. The songs fell out and all I had to do was take all the pieces and arrange them”.

I have talked about BC Camplight a lot and, with the help of some great interviews, revealed more about the man behind the music. I am charged with actually offering my own opinions about his music and, with a fresh and glorious album out in the world, I have selected Born to Cruise as a track to highlight. To be honest, I could have chosen any of the album tracks and had loads of positive things to say, but I do feel like Born to Cruise is a natural and easy highlight. The song is the penultimate song on the nine-track album, and I love how well programmed and sequenced Shortly After Takeoff is. It is neither top or bottom-heavy, and you get this wonderful flow that means you are invested from the first track to the final call. I love how Born to Cruise starts and the images it provokes. We get a nice beat and washes of synths; there is this blend of the now and sounds of the 1980s. One is on the road with BC Camplight and, though he might be speaking figuratively, it is wonderful following this song. The hero has had his indicator on for a while – it sounds like “since Crewe”, but I might have misheard it -, and he gets his tyres from the wrong side of town. The cool synths and driving beat of the songs suggests a cruise down an American highway as the wind breezes by but, here, I think this is more a troubled drive through a British lens. As I said, I feel the road images are substitutes for emotions and life experiences, but the wit that is laced through Born to Cruise is wonderful. I can imagine a video being made for the song – not that this will be a possibility for a while – where we see the hero being beeped at by motorists behind him and having to face this rather tense drive, as he pulls into a tyre shop and deal with these dodgy characters.

BC Camplight’s ride – or his physical and mental state – seems to decline as we get further down the tracks. Backed by wordless (female) vocals, one gets this sort of sweet melody casualness as the hero describes things breaking down rapidly. With a flavour of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, BC Camplight has noticed oil leaking, everything going to sh*t, and his ride being less than desirable. Again, if there was a video made, one would imagine this car falling apart as it drives along as, in the end, he has to pedal the thing like he was in The Flinstones! Although BC Camplight is noticing these hazards and holdbacks, his voice remains pretty collected: a man observing things cracking rather than falling apart because of them. I adore the composition, as there is a warmth that comes from it. Rather than putting the beats too high in the mix and throwing dark notes and big guitars into the pot, one gets this fizz and soothe that means Born to Cruise adopts this charm and nostalgia. I am not sure what inspired the song, but one gets the feeling a sense of emotional struggle and madness might have affected the process – whether it the hero reacting to the wider world or something more contained and personal, I am not too sure. Like a physical drive, there are actual twists and turns regarding the composition and pace of the song. We had been going down this straight road – one littered with shrapnel and puddles -, but there is this movement when the narrative shifts – the hero saying he will see the heroine/subject when he can; perhaps aware that there is this stubborn vehicle that will not move -, and there is a lovely bit of clarinet that sort of comes from nowhere. Lesser artists would keep the composition pretty straight and strict; BC Camplight allows Born to Cruise to wind and snake as we get closer to the final destination.

Although some of the lyrics are hard to pick up – wither slightly buried in the composition or not that easy to decipher -, I think that actually gives the song new strength – as the hero sort of becomes clear and then slightly lost at various points; this emphasises the rather tense and troubled drive he is on. For some reason, there is a small koala beer in the boot – maybe having a sleep or munching on some eucalyptus (or is it bamboo?!). I sort of picked up on that line as, perhaps, a reference to the hero being asleep or in a low mood. Koalas sleep eighteen-twenty hours a day (lazy bastards!), and, maybe, there is this sort of slower, fatigued part at the back of BC Camplight’s mind, that is holding him back. There are so many wonderful images and detailed scenes, that every listener will have their own interpretation and perspective. After the rather cool bit of clarinet – that sounds way cooler than it did on The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four- there is this awesome bit of spooky theremin (why not!). It is almost like the hero is driving this ghostly highway, and he has entered the badlands. I think it is more a sign that his mental state has taken a turn; maybe things have taken a slightly bad turn – or maybe I have got the wrong impression and the song is about something else altogether. There is a little passage where BC Camplight manages to mix Muse and Scott Walker at the same time; Born to Cruise is so busy and unpredictable, you get these wonderful touches and textures that makes the song so compelling. I had to listen to Born to Cruise a few times through, as it knocked me back when I first heard it. The lyrics are so compelling and interesting, one cannot help but project their own cinema and plot the course for our hero. The composition is so colourful and vivid, it adds new dimensions to the song. The production is flawless and, aside from one or two slight niggles (some lyrics are hard to hear; I would have liked to hear the song go on for another thirty seconds or so), Born to Cruise is a masterful song in an album filled with gems and jewels.

BC Camplight did have some dates lined up for the spring and summer but, as things have changed, one has to wait until later this year before they can see him. It is a shame that he cannot take Shortly After Takeoff on the road, as it would have been great for him to get that reaction from audience. One of the best things about releasing an album is taking it to the people and seeing how they respond to songs; having that shared conversation and relationship. Right now, the album is gathering impassioned reviews, and it will only be a matter of time before we get to see BC Camplight hit the road once more. If you can buy the album on vinyl – there is a link at the top of this review – then do so, as it is a wonderful thing and one of the finest albums of the year. It has been a very rich and amazing time for music, and I wonder whether we are reacting differently to albums because of the lockdown. Shortly After Takeoff is genius anyway, but it is speaking in a different way because we all are living through this very challenging time. There are more uplifting songs that get into the heart, and emotive moments that take you by surprise. The compositions are so strong and varied, whilst the vocal performances are as striking as any out there. The music of BC Camplight gets stronger by the release, and I think we are all so grateful that we have a new album from him. I shall wrap things up in a second but, if you are new to BC Camplight, go and follow him on social media and go investigate his music. There is so much love out there for his current opus; surely Shortly After Takeoff is a benchmark other artists need to look up to. Without further delay, make sure you get BC Camplight in your orbit and prepare to be blown away by…