The story of Christopher Duncan’s début album Architect is (in some circles at least) well known thanks to frequent retelling.
Recorded in his Glasgow flat over 12 painstaking months in which he played the roles of writer, performer, mixer and producer, its subsequent largely word-of-mouth, viral popularity ended up with the Scot clutching a Mercury Prize nomination.
Not bad for a record which cost roughly £50 to make. C Duncan‘s bookish charm also helped spread the word, himself the son of two classical musicians, as the man who once waited tables four nights a week to get by found himself caught in the reflection of acclaim. Architect‘s bijou charm and sense of timeless innocence connected universally across the taste spectrum, a veritable feast of styles and yet beholden to none, carving an unexpected niche with fans of revisionist folk, austere chamber pop and the neo-classicism of acts like Sigur Ros and Efterklang.
Fittingly perhaps, for someone apparently so obsessed with the 20th century’s familiar surfaces, the singer has intimated that The Midnight Sun was inspired by the 1960’s TV show The Twilight Zone, an arcane study of the occult and the human condition, a modern antique which after ceasing acquired a half life all of its own. Anyone concerned about skeletons falling out of closets can however rest easy: there are thrills here, but not of the cheap variety.
The first surprise is that Duncan has this time turned down the opportunity of working with a band and in a studio, maintaining his ultra domestic (and sometimes isolated) modus operandi despite doubtless now having access to greater resources. As Architect demonstrated so effectively however, recording alone doesn’t obviously narrow any horizons, and in fact when there are marked differences between the two releases it’s due now to him exercising broader perspectives and a willingness to push his craft onward.
There’s clearly no hangover: opener Nothing More reveals a man completely warm to the task, his gentle but keening grasp of harmonies and exquisite layering as immaculate as ever, its salad days effortlessness the hallmark of a songwriter you would expect to be a decade or two further into their process.
This peace is The Midnight Sun’s go to mood. If its predecessor had a flaw it was perhaps in the shopping list of styles and a slightly choppy second half – along with an unintentional air of kitsch – but Duncan rarely falls back on those props here. Instead, there’s a definitive pulse, one which comes as a result of pushing a whirl of electronics to the fore and in doing so suffering less friction, the neat piano swatches and rippling pads of On Course melting sleekly into Last To Leave‘s beatific caress.
Where this places him in relative terms to other artists is less conclusive: the most obvious comparison would be to the neon madrigals of Active Child, but there remains an unquantifiably puckish ethic that marks songs like Do I Hear? and the title track as products of a singular, idiosyncratic talent needing few accommodating peers. Only once – on the dolorous closer Window – does the formula seem trite, but it’s a minor trough compared to the bold peaks of Wanted To Want It Too and Other Side, the latter without question the singer’s most complete work to date, a soaring tour de force that quashes any lingering notions of a lucky start.
The Midnight Sun finds its creator on the cusp, a party of one but projecting like a hive mind, this time reigning in the multiple personalities of his first album and drawing down on something more singular and enveloping. He’s produced another sophisticated record which again will defy being easily bracketed, but is just as essential as the first.
For now, flying solo shows no sign of bringing Christopher Duncan to earth.
