BC Camplight
A Sober Conversation
BELLA UNION
Jersey-born and Philadelphia-reared vocalist and pianist BC Camplight wound up as one of art-pop’s great English eccentrics by way of having signed first to the UK’s One Little Independent label for his 2005 debut Hide, Run Away and the aptly titled Blink of a Nihilist from 2007, then moving to Manchester and releasing How to Die in the North a full eight years later. While his warmly Brian-meets-Burt brand of grand neo-chamber-pop was uplifting in a bittersweet manner, BC’s lyrics were laser-honed on prickly personal issues of mental health and the many abuses of his body and soul. Pretty much, if you wanted to know how Camplight was doing, just listen to his latest album.
The same is true of A Sober Conversation. Though he’s given up liquor and drugs, BC hasn’t forgotten how to lyricize wittily in the name of possible ruination as he smartly rips on everything from the woes of being abused as a child to coming to grips with adult responsibility, sobriety and beyond, with the frankness for which he’s long been beloved. The breezy bossa-samba of “Two Legged Dog,” the steadying cosmopolitan jazz of “Drunk Talk,” the crinkle-cut pop of “Bubbles in the Gasoline” (with Jessica Branney of Peaness)—all of these songs are viciously funny in the bleak, blackest manner possible, yet still manage to speak to the upbeat without a snip of excess emotion. “Where You Taking My Baby?” feels like an angry riposte and a hilarious joke simultaneously.
All that, and there’s never a plea for pity or a hint of hysteria in his work, no matter how universe-ending his matters of the heart and head may seem. That’s because as a lyricist and as a vocalist, BC Camplight never wanted you to feel sorry for him; not when he was drunk and sad, and certainly not now that he’s sober and happier—or at least glad to be unhappy when the mood strikes.
