Does immense suffering act as a catalyst for great art? Brian Christinzio, appears in pole position to answer the question

A decade ago, on a whim, he swapped Philadelphia for Manchester in an act of desperation intended to put clear blue water between himself and his drug and alcohol addictions. His  Manchester Trilogy, How to Die in the North, Deportation Blues and Shortly After Takeoff, released under his stage name of BC Camplight, were accompanied by, respectively, deportation, the death of his father and an accompanying mental breakdown, and the Covid pandemic

Now The Last Rotation of Earth, details the slow, emotional end of a nine-year relationship, amid a backdrop of addiction struggles and mental anguish. Unsurprisingly, the album is pretty bleak in its themes and motifs. Each song glides past like pictures in a scrapbook detailing the downward spiral of a love affair, with lyrics that feel like overheard snippets of bitter arguments and heartbroken reflections into a bathroom mirror

Listening to The Last Rotation of Earth, it’s easy at various times to identify elements of Brill Building pop, the genius of Brian Wilson, the conversational piano ballads and humour of Randy Newman, the skittishness of Harry Nilsson and 10CC at their most disruptive

The album starts with the title track and its addictive piano melody. Its opening lines encapsulate the disorder “you missed a hell of a party, I said to the kitchen floor”, he proceeds to comment on the beautiful morning to a concerned Tesco cashier as he contemplates his final day. The music flips into noisy interludes and vocal yelps, throws in a gospel choir to create a tour-de-force appropriate for the occasion

From its opening bars of scraping cello, The Movie verbalises stage direction so in “scene 1 – we see a man in his forties, he’s sat at the kitchen table dressed in a Kermit the frog onesie”. Arguments follow about the pronunciation of Louis Theroux’s name while in “scene 2 – we see a mirror and a reflection of the man. He’s repeatedly singing himself the last line of ‘Happy Birthday’.” The song merges elements of classic baroque pop and over the top film soundtrack with syrupy strings

As a transplanted American, he delights in the sort of references to local places that rarely appear in popular song. His previous album Shortly After Takeoff contained references to the Arndale Centre, Oldham and Crewe while The Last Rotation of Earth includes the ironically titled It Never Rains in Manchester which sees him stating “that’s enough similes. Who am I? Jonathan Steinbeck?” and staging a reception in the curry mile during a song that takes in wandering strings, discord and spoken interludes

Kicking Up A Fuss was written while he was living in a dirty cheap Liverpool hotel haunted by all its guests and looking like it hadn’t been redecorated in forty years. The narrator wonders whether he has the strength to fight back but recognises “no-one save me but me… I don’t want to be somebody else but I don’t want to be myself”. It’s fuelled by an infectious synth line before referencing forming a doowop band followed by appropriate vocal harmonising

The Liverpool Philharmonic add massive heft to She’s Gone Cold, written two days after the split. It is a breakup song and demented power ballad that utilises quotes from the breakup and is surely the only pop song to reference daytime TV’s Homes under the Hammer. There are surreal touches like Christinzio’s dog packing up his things and hoping he lands on his feet. The massive percussion hammers home the impact

Fear: Life in a Dozen Years ricochets between humungous riffs, gentle balladry and wafting saxophone. For most of its journey Going Out on a Low Note is a restrained piano ballad which sees him taking and discarding a call from the lottery with good news. His fragile mental health is summarised by the lines “my brain says, ‘stay the course’ / pretty rich when you consider the source / now I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure/ you shouldn’t cry when you listen to Faith No More” and the song temporarily ascends to a peak of Frankie Valli level high pitched vocalising intensity before subsiding

The duet with his ex-fiance (sung with the excellent Francesca Pidgeon), I’m Ugly is monumental in its level of self-loathing with Christinzio being told “you’re fucking hideous”. Dodging any clumsy attempt at closure, instead the album elects to just fade out with The Mourning, a slow almost wordless elegy taking the album out on a low note and refusing to offer a false happy ending concluding with a sampled voice saying, “at stake now is every man’s fate”

‘The Last Rotation of Earth’ is pleasurably exhausting in its imaginative montage of lyrical threads and the way a winning melody will be discarded in passing rather than dragged out for a lengthy tune. It’s the culmination of Christinzio’s career so far and will surely find a spot in most critics’ albums of 2023 list. Hopefully, it will be matched by similar commercial success. Contrary to the theory, such is his creativity and self-awareness it is inconceivable that great riches and a contented personal life would ever lead BC Camplight into the bland territory of supine piano ballads