It’s natural to expect a singer-songwriter to give something of themselves through their music. But indie auteur Brian Christinzio, aka BC Camplight, has had more to share than most, especially in the last decade since he forsook his native New Jersey and musical base in Philadelphia for Manchester.

His 2018 album Deportation Blues was inspired by his wrangles with UK immigration when he outstayed his original visa due to ill health. Follow-up Shortly After Takeoff confronted bereavement following the death of his father, and The Last Rotation Of Earth, released in 2023, dealt with the break-up of his long-term relationship.

Time to catch a break with his seventh album surely? The non-cryptically titled A Sober Conversation is indeed Christinzio’s first record while clean. He ditched a 20-year cocaine habit on his birthday two years ago but, divested of his coping mechanism, he was forced to confront his childhood abuse by a summer-camp counsellor. The opening track is a space rock opera called ‘The Tent’ which follows bittersweet innocence (‘I wonder if my shoes are as cool as the other kids’) with the devastating realisation that ‘some people face the music, some people face the floor.’

Yet, as always, Christinzio couches his darkest revelations in drollery and delivers them as uplifting, even mischievous baroque pop. Album highlight ‘Rock Gently In Disorder’ grabs from the first stroke of piano, evoking Brian Wilson’s symphonic pop rhapsodies, while he makes a shocking revelation of a different stripe on the title track: ‘don’t tell anyone, I don’t care for David Bowie.’

BC Camplight, La Belle Angele, Saturday 3 August, 7pm.