BC Camplight opens up about his depression, his addiction and the childhood abuse that has haunted him on Two Legged Dog.

There’s a rich history in pop music of sad songs with happy tunes. Or, if you prefer, happy songs with sad lyrics. Like, for example, Mr Brightside by The Killers – a euphoric anthem about a relationship gone wrong – or Abba’s singalong favourite Mamma Mia, its jaunty tune disguising a lyric filled with heartbreak and loss.

Here’s another, this time from Brian Christinzio – better known by his stage name of BC Camplight – with added vocal help from Abigail Morris of The Last Dinner Party.

A Sober Conversation is as sad as its title suggests; although the lyrics are cryptic, over the course of the fortchoming album Christianzi opens up about his struggles with depression and substance abuse, before revealing the awful truth of a dreadful childhood trauma.

The song came to him, he says, after a lifetime of trying to stay one step ahead of his fears and memories, when he embraced sobriety and had a long talk with himself that was “disturbing but genuine and life-changing.”

That’s the Sober Conversation of the song title – also the title of his forthcoming album: “I had spent 30 years being terrified to open that door, and afraid of the price I’d pay once I had,” he says. “I’ve opened the door. And this… is what was on the other side.”

I have to confess I’m not really familiar with Camplight’s previous work, which began 20 years ago with the musicians who would go on to join War On Drugs, and continued after he left his native Philadelphia and moved to… Manchester.

Yep, the one where it rains all the time – though he was deported just days before the release of his album, ironically titled How To Die In The North. Then, having made it back here on his Italian passport and recorded another aptly titled album, Deportation Blues, his father died days before its release in 2016.

That triggered a breakdown that inspired his next album Shortly After Takeoff – completing what he calls his Manchester Trilogy – and was followed by The Last Rotation Of Earth. Like the others, it came from a dark period and an existential crisis, and received rave reviews.

It was his first to reach the Top 40, after which he got over a break-up, buried his addictions, started therapy and put everything into his new album A Sober Conversation, coming out soon.

And although I have previously expressed disdain for The Last Dinner Party, I am better disposed towards her since I saw two of them (including Abigail) walking past my local boozer the other day as I was inside. Because I’m that shallow.