Dickie Felton | 1 August 2021 |
Gig-goers take wrong turns at Manchester’s Soup and walk straight into BC Camplight’s dressing room.
Signage for the toilets at the dimly lit basement venue are non-existent.
So it’s easy to confuse bog with green room and gatecrash a great composer as he prepares for his first live gig in 18 months.
BC Camplight – real name Brian Christinzio – seems unperturbed by the accidental invasions of privacy.
It all adds to an evening of giddy excitement in extremely intimate surroundings.
Around 150 fans pack the sold-out Spear Street venue to catch cowboy hat clad BC blaze his way through a set of songs that are both stunning and surreal.
But first up – Paige Kennedy – a young Manchester artist who got the support slot after Camplight asked songwriters to get in touch if they fancied joining him for soup of the day.
There’s a touch of Kurt Cobain about Paige who plays a kind of graceful grunge, if that’s an actual genre?
Her song Mouth Open does indeed lead to jaws dropping. Kennedy has a look of Sinead O’Connor and a voice like Kristin Hersh – which is a heady combination.
Paige Kennedy
She ends her set with the Kate Bush cover And Dream of Sheep, “because I think BC Camplight fans would like it…” she says. And they really do.
It’s Brian time bang on 9pm and he receives a raucous welcome from his hometown crowd.
The American has been in the UK for 10 years and must surely qualify as one of the most talented songwriters Manchester has ever produced.
He launches into I Only Drink When I’m Drunk – the opener from 2020 record Shortly After Takeoff – before cruising to 35000 feet with You’ve Should’ve Gone To School.
The song’s 1950s rockabilly guitar riff is something Johnny Marr would be proud of. Throw in spacey keyboards and brilliant backing vocals and the song soars before Brian meets microphone.
BC Camplight
And when his Beach Boys–esque vocals take the song by the scruff of the neck the crowd go into meltdown. Washed down with dreamy and dark lyrics, the track could be Camplight’s finest hour:
“I don’t want to go all the way to Mexico, Cause there’s creatures in the air, And they watch you with a cold stare.”
Back to Work explores mental health and there’s a black humour as the Soup crowd revel in the singalong chorus “Back to work, back to work, I’m going back to work.”
Just Because I Love You is another stonker of a song with BC’s vocal range unbelievable. He’s Johnny Cash, he’s the Bee Gees, he’s Michael Nyman, he’s something from outer-space.
It strikes me that BC Camplight is a great poet of Manchester. The most articulate commentator about the city since LS Lowry or The Smiths.
His songs are a landscape of the city from smoothie stands in the Arndale to chippy shops in Oldham…
A lyric which during I Want to Be In The Mafia prompts the first heckle of the night.
“It’s chip shop” quips one of the audience before Camplight stops mid-song and snaps back: “I sang chip shop. I know I sang it wrong on the record. Get over it. 70000 emails a week…”
Shortly after Takeoff, I’m OK With the World and I’m In a Weird Place Now send the crowd into further frenzy.
*BC Camplight is on tour in August, October, November and early 2022*