C Duncan - It's Only A Love Song C Duncan

“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 fifth album, It’s Only a Love Song, released through Bella Union on 24th January 2024.

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.

Previously, on 2022’s Alluvium, Chris had treated his wide-ranging stories as fertile soil for a record of multi-stranded tones and styles. It’s Only a Love Song is closer to a song suite, at once immaculately sequenced, lavishly arranged, and anchored in personal experiences of love – notably, Chris and his long-term partner recently married – and loss.

As he explains, “I’ve been wanting to do a record that is unashamedly romantic and slightly old-timey. Quite a lot of my stuff has a hint of that, but this one is more kind of 1970s, with the string arrangements and a sort of warmth sprinkled on top. And whereas Alluvium had the space to meander off into its own areas, with this one I thought more about pace and how each song could go into the next one. There is more of a theme – it’s a highly romantic record, which then goes from that into dealing with the loss of friends and relatives.”