Following huge acclaim for last year’s Shortly After Takeoff album, which was hailed by The Guardian as a 5-star “masterpiece” and featured in a number of Best of 2020 lists, BC Camplight returns with a brilliant new single, “I’m Alright In The World”. Of the track Brian Christinzio aka BC Camplight says: “This song title is taken from a mantra I’ve used for years to bring myself down from my emotional boiling point. I turned the mantra into a song and for the first time in my career I’ve created something that speaks to me, reminding me to breathe and be alright in the world… even if that world is on fire”.
Additionally, BC Camplight has announced extensive live plans for Summer and Autumn of this year and early 2022. These include festival appearances at the likes of Green Man and Standon Calling as well as numerous headline shows including a Manchester Ritz performance in December and a London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire in April next year. Dates/info HERE.
BC Camplight’s Brian Christinzio was already considered one of independent music’s most distinctively gifted minds when he released 2020’s Shortly After Takeoff, a masterful exhibition of darkly humorous storytelling and uniquely twisted musicality. The album, hailed by The Guardian as a five-star “masterpiece”, capped off a what Christinzio called his “Manchester Trilogy”. This was a trio of albums released after his emigration to the UK from Philadelphia where the songwriter had endured a decade-long stretch of homelessness and bouts of severe mental illness. “I needed to change my life so I packed my bags and essentially threw a dart at a map” said Christinzio.
His arrival in Manchester prompted an eruption of creativity which resulted in his first album for the label Bella Union, How To Die In The North. However, two days after its release Christinzio’s story turned even more cinematic when an immigration issue resulted in his deportation and ban from the UK. After attaining Italian citizenship he defiantly returned to Manchester and released Deportation Blues, an icy take on the political landscape. Word-of-mouth about BC Camplight’s immense live shows had been building and resulted in a considerable increase in the artist’s audience. The final record of the trilogy, Shortly After Takeoff, written after his father’s sudden death, had all the markings of an album that would be Christinzio’s breakthrough. Obviously 2020 had other plans.
“I think I relied on the wisdom I gained from all of the brutally dark periods of my life. I found myself repeating this mantra over and over… “I’m Alright In The World”. Every time the demons came close to the surface I’d say it again. Eventually I figured out that the mantra’s power was magnified tenfold as a piece of music”. The song was originally intended as a guided meditation (if you listen closely you can hear Christinzio saying “Breathe In And Out” in the choruses) but morphed into a call and response between dark and light, defeat and victory. Ultimately the light wins and leaves us awash in melancholic contentment, a place we all need to visit right now.