C Duncan - It's Only A Love Song

"I love the idea of something being so romantic that it almost hurts," says C (for Chris) Duncan of the music he adores

Glasgow's classically trained multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter honours that
idea with tremendous reserves of panache and feeling on his ffth album, It's Only a
Love Song, released through Bella Union on 24th January 2025. Flushed with
swooning strings, enraptured images, classicist melodies and dreamy harmonies, it's
a record of orchestral pop romanticism at its most sublime: one from the heart,
warmed by a deep ache of constant yearning.

An expansive beauty of an album, the record is made all the more extraordinary by its
homegrown gestation. Duncan wrote and played most of it himself at his home studio
(he also did the artwork) in Helensburgh, an experience suited to his sense of care
and craft. "If you want to spend ages working on one tiny sound and then do a broad
sweep of something else, it doesn't matter because the time is yours. I'm not paying
for studios, which works for me because I go from having intense periods of working
to spending ages making a snare drum sound a bit nicer. It'll take days to do, but it's
good."

The result is Duncan's most lush release, and a fresh peak in a dazzling creative arc.
Born in Glasgow, he played in school bands before studying music composition at the
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His haunting debut album, Architect (2015), banked
a Mercury Music Prize nomination; its follow- up, the Twilight Zone- inspired The
Midnight Sun (2016), reached the shortlist for the Scottish Album of the Year. A tour
with Elbow then beckoned, after which Duncan recorded the richly melodic Health
(2019) at Elbow's Salford studio with Craig Potter. Another entry on the shortlist for
Scottish Album of the Year came accompanied by effusive reviews: throughout his
career, Duncan has banked raves from The Guardian, NME, MOJO, Uncut and others,
alongside much love from BBC Radio 6 Music.

Besides support slots with Belle & Sebastian and Elbow, Chris went on to fll sizable
venues in his own name, including London's Union Chapel and Scala. Another career
development beckoned in 2020 via a collaboration with Bella Union's Simon Raymonde for the Lost Horizons project on the song 'Circle', prefguring the effortless-seeming breeziness of Alluvium. It's Only a Love Song is his next great leap forward, a heartfelt valentine to romance with its head in the heavens and its sweep in the cinema stalls. Alongside The Carpenters and Scott Walker, declared infuences range from Michel Legrand to Bernstein's West Side Story and the flms of Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrellas of Cherbourg boasts music to make hearts sing. "It's almost hyper-romantic, which I love," explains Chris: "That way in music where you get to a point where your heart can't actually take anymore." Radiant and rapturous, It's Only a Love Song takes you right there.

Tracks: It's Only A Love Song / Lucky Today / Triste Clair De Lune /
Worry / The Space Between Us / Think About It / Delirium / Sadness / Surface Of A
Fantasy / Reprise / Time And Again

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