22 Dec 2024
James Cameron is back at The Horn to catch an intimate and innovative gig from a rising star…
I was giddy with excitement when I heard that BC Camplight was playing the Horn, as he is responsible for one of my favourite albums of last year, ‘Last Rotation of Earth’. It is of course still too early to proclaim my favourite albums of this year – who knows what will occur in the next couple of weeks – so technically he’s still one of the reigning champs.
That The Horn has attracted an artist of this high standing to play really speaks to their ability to punch above their weight when it comes to booking talent.
Support was furnished by Luca Wilding, a sensitive singer-songwriter who looked like Adam Driver in high-waisted trousers. It was a very pleasant surprise when he started singing after introducing himself as his speaking and singing voices were completely different. The latter is a crystal clear thing of ethereal beauty, the former just sounds like a guy down the pub.
Accompanying himself on guitar it was lovely music to let your mind wander to, and a million miles from the head-banging and disco dancing of High Fade a couple of weeks ago.
Wilding is well named as his lyrics return again to natural themes, and his songs were linked by lovely little slice-of-life stories. He was very clearly channeling the spirit of Jeff Buckley, and even finished the show with a cover of ‘Hallelujah’, the third act in a row to finish their set on a cover rather than trusting their own material. My only issue was that the performance was a trifle too delicate, and I was acutely aware of not just audience conversations but sneezes, coughs or even people clinking the ice in their drinks too loudly.
There was absolutely nothing delicate about BC Camplight, or Brian Christinzio Camplight to give him his full name, or BCC to arbitrarily abbreviate it still further. He bundled onto stage like a great ball of energy with a large personality and burst straight into ‘Last Rotation of Earth’, possibly his biggest song to date and a ballsy move. Like Wilding before him he was a solitary presence on the stage, but he still managed to fill it with more to spare.
He had come prepared, with a collection of facts about St Albans to endear him to the local audience. Unfortunately he’d left these backstage so we instead got the ones about Coventry where he’d been the day before.
To be fair, I probably knew most of the ones about here but as it was I learnt a surprising amount (did you know that the largest cholera outbreak in Europe was in Coventry?).
To an extent the show was a love letter to the piano that was his only companion for this tour, and he jumped between styles, invoking the spirit of Stevie Wonder one minute and Billy Joel the next.
Then to catch you off guard he would effortlessly slip into songs of exquisite beauty such as ‘She’s Gone Cold’, while still managing to fit in a namecheck for ‘Homes Under the Hammer’. Daytime TV seems a key touchpoint as David Dickinson also got a shout-out later on ‘Kicking up a Fuss’.
The whole thing was endearingly ramshackle, with requests taken from the audience and songs abandoned a few bars in, and there was a sense of playfulness to proceedings. It made you feel that it was a unique experience that could go off in any direction and that you were lucky to be experiencing the whole thing as it happened.
It’s possible the songs would have been more polished and had a deeper sound with a full band in support, but the pared down arrangements really gave Christinzio’s lyrics a chance to shine, like ‘I Want to be in the Mafia’ about how the disappointment of reality pales in comparison to an imagined life in the Cosa Nostra (not the St Albans pizzeria).
Christinzio’s personality shines through at every stage, for example letting us know beforehand that we’re not getting an encore as they are, to quote, “the stupidest things ever”. Across the length of the show you get a sense of someone who has been plugging away for over 20 years and who has only recently started to see things slot into place, despite the best efforts of the
Home Office to deport him back to his native America. He is delighted to have got to where he is today, and I am delighted to have had a chance to see him in this relaxed and intimate venue before, as he so rightly says, he gets way too big to be playing this sort of place.
