Imagine a Badly Drawn Boy, with a history of mental illness, born and raised in the USA. One who’s as much a piano fetishist as Ben Folds. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you BC Camplight.

Camplight is one Brian Christinzio. A twentysomething singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania. Blink of A Nihilist is his second album, following on from 2005’s Hide, Run Away.

On first listen, in spite of the at times quirky instrumentation, the tracks will hit you with the full force of a feather. However, they’re not as light as you think. Before recording the album, Christinzio visited New Jersey jails and mental hospitals, posing as a volunteer, later to weave the stories he heard into songs.

With an ear for melody a la Inara George, this can’t be the same BC Camplight who once told a journalist: “To tell you the truth, I don’t particularly like music.” Although with lyrics including “Tu pareces un mono con la mente de bacalao” (You resemble a monkey with the mentality of a cod) on ‘Soy Tonto’, it’s surely the same BC Camplight who previously titled a track: ‘She Oozes Like A Cyst’.

The cover features a cartoon owing a debt to American Splendor creator, Harvey Pekar. Musically, though, he’s in hock to the likes of Elliot Smith, Brian Wilson, and, on ‘I’ve Got a Bad Cold’, barber-shop quartets, along with the aforementioned BDB and Folds. But what in less capable hands would sound pastiche becomes something thrillingly original with Christinzio calling the shots.

(4½/5)