It's Only A Love Song

Chris Duncan loves the idea of something being so romantic that it almost hurts. Glasgow's classically trained multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter honors that idea with tremendous reserves of panache and feeling on his fifth album, It's Only a Love Song, released through Bella Union.

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, It's Only a Love Song is made all the more extraordinary by its homegrown gestation. Duncan wrote and played most of it himself at his home studio in Helensburgh, an experience suited to his sense of care and craft. 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.

Alongside The Carpenters and Scott Walker, declared influences range from Michel Legrand to Bernstein's West Side Story and the films of Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrellas of Cherbourg boasts music to make hearts sing. Radiant and rapturous, It's Only a Love Song takes you right there.