BRUNO MAJOR
COLUMBO 
Album out today

via HARBOUR ARTISTS & MUSIC / AWAL RECORDINGS

Listen HERE

Debuts
‘THE SHOW MUST GO ON’
clip

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‘The Show Must Go On’ follows on from previous releases ‘A Strange Kind of Beautiful’, ‘Tell Her’, album title track ‘Columbo’, and his first new track in three years, ‘We Were Never Really Friends’.

Columbo raises its curtain with ‘The Show Must Go On’, a piano flourish giving way to a clean, snare-less drum pattern and guitar strum that conjures the cosy fireside intimacy of Neil Young’s Out on the Weekend. ‘If you’re always putting on a show/You lose yourself before you know’ comes the pre-chorus cry. “It is the only [song] that really focuses on my sort of personal viewpoint,” confides Major. It therefore felt like a natural opening gambit to “introduce” the album, he says.

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Elsewhere, ‘Tell Her’ is a slice of simmering R&B, while the heart-breaking ‘Tears in Rain’ is dedicated to his late grandmother. The song posits questions – “the little details” – to his late loved one that he never asked while she was here, expressing regret and longing for the time they’ll meet again. ‘18’ extrapolates his conflicting emotions regarding a friend who committed suicide over 15 years ago (‘I’m twice the age you’ll ever be’, he sings).

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‘We Were Never Really Friends’ picks over the bones of a relationship gone wrong, while ‘You Take the High Road’ summons the spirit of Elliott Smith in its haunting vocal and sparse guitar. ‘Trajectories’ is the third instalment of a series that started with ‘Places We Don’t Walk’ on his debut and the title track from the second album. “Trajectories feels like the [final] trilogy [piece],” he says. ‘The End’ rounds off the album, featuring a soaring solo that recalls perennial influence, Queen, and more pertinently, Brian May.

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“Something I’ve managed to do with Columbo more than any other album is find a way of saying exactly what I want to say,” reveals Major. “The album investigates my personal relationships with people and other things. It is self-diagnosis on a grand scale.”

Crucially, Major feels that all roads have led to Columbo: “I’ve been so dedicated to art my whole life,” he says. “All I really focused on from the age of seven was my guitar; and whether it was getting my jazz degree, or learning how to write songs, or learning how to produce for two years, this album feels like the reason I did all that stuff. I’m so proud of it. I feel peace in a way that I’ve never felt peace before because I feel I’ve done what I owed myself.”

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Columbo is Bruno Major’s defining statement to date. A musician who wears his heart (and art) on his sleeve, this is the sound of an artist who risked it all and somehow made it back to shore.