Every BC Camplight album has a backstory every bit as compelling as its music. A Sober Conversation is no different, as virtuoso songwriter and pianist Brian Christinzio documents the last two years of his life, finally confronting a shocking childhood trauma while embracing sobriety, to create his bravest and most revealing record. It’s an enthralling, sometimes haunting quasi-concept record marked by ruthless tragic-comedic purging and sublime, intricate melody, knitting lyrical screenplays to dazzling arrangements. It is BC Camplight at the height of his remarkable powers. 

A Sober Conversation follows Christinzio’s 2023 album, the critically celebrated The Last Rotation Of Earth (his first Top 40 album), a record centred around the agonising break-up of his long-term relationship. It received the most ecstatic reviews of his career - “A masterpiece” (Sunday Times), “Masterful” (Uncut), “An extraordinary record” (MOJO) - and his biggest headline shows up to that point at London Shepherd’s Bush Empire and Manchester’s Albert Hall. But even increased recognition for the man’s considerable talent cannot compensate for the man’s long history of depression, and Christinzio admits it’s been a hard-fought battle to reach this point in life. 

“Around the time of The Last Rotation… I realised I was living in this perpetual childhood, messed up all the time, trying to free myself from responsibility and all the bad thoughts I had. It led to a kind of existential crisis… I was craving meaning, thinking about having kids… I’ve been running away from stuff for a long time. You can either try and achieve milestones in life or chase a dime bag - you can’t do both. And I’ve decided not to let myself be defeated anymore.”

In part, Christinzio’s new-found clarity led him back to childhood, to summer camp in New Jersey when he was abused by an adult counsellor. Previous BC Camplight records have referred to it obliquely, but it’s now front and centre of A Sober Conversation. “I had spent 30 years being terrified to open that door, and afraid of the price I’d pay once I had. I’ve opened the door. To some extent this album is what was on the other side. I hope it helps me but this album is also for everyone that is having trouble finding their bravery, finding themselves” he says.

As album intro ‘The Tent’ evolves from an ominous crescendo of synths and footsteps into a pensive country-tinged piano ballad into a passage of increasing tonal violence and euphoric choral harmonies, Christinzio sets the scene of the crime.Later on in the album, stunning magnum opus ‘Rock Gently To Disorder’ underlines how the struggle continues. “I might be owning my life, but it doesn’t mean it's not going to hurt,” he affirms. “It’s always going to hurt.”

Hurt, alongside its good friends Confusion and Anger, have shaped every BC Camplight record, from his 2005 debut, when he was backed by musicians who would eventually join The War On Drugs. But by 2010, after he released a second album, Christinzio knew he had to leave Philly. “If I’d stayed,” he once mused, “I’d be dead. Period.” So he took a friend’s advice to escape his circumstances and moved to, of all places, Manchester. He found his way to Bella Union, when he began again, releasing the album How To Die In The North. Just days before it was released in 2014, Christinzio was deported back to Philly. He got back to the UK via an Italian passport and made Deportation Blues - but just days before its release in 2016, his father died, triggering the breakdown that inspired Shortly After Takeoff, the last part of what Christinzio calls his Manchester Trilogy.  

The Last Rotation Of Earth followed, and Christinzio got through the break-up, started therapy, buried his addictions, and made his new masterwork A Sober Conversation. The album is self-played except drums (shared between Sidonie Hand-Halford and Adam Dawson, who plays in Christinzio’s live band), plus backing singer Jessica Branney. Live band members Jolan Lewis and Thom Bellini make cameos. Christinzio believes that his sobriety, “really comes out in the music. It’s more meaningful because it’s coming from a place of clarity.”