C Duncan

"I love the idea of something being so romantic that it almost hurts," says C (for Chris) Duncan of the music he adores.

Glasgow's classically trained multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter honours that idea with tremendous reserves of panache and feeling on his fifth album, 'It's Only a Love Song'. Flushed with swooning strings, enraptured images, classicist melodies and dreamy harmonies, it's a record of orchestral pop romanticism at its most sublime: one from the heart, warmed by a deep ache of constant yearning. An expansive beauty of an album, the record is made all the more extraordinary by its homegrown gestation. Duncan wrote and played most of it himself at his home studio (he also did the artwork) in Helensburgh, an experience suited to his sense of care and craft. "If you want to spend ages working on one tiny sound and then do a broad sweep of something else, it doesn't matter because the time is yours. I'm not paying for studios, which works for me because I go from having intense periods of working to spending ages making a snare drum sound a bit nicer. It'll take days to do, but it's good."

The result is Duncan's most lush release, and a fresh peak in a dazzling creative arc. Born in Glasgow, he played in school bands before studying music composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 'It's Only a Love Song' is his next great leap forward, a heartfelt valentine to romance with its head in the heavens and its sweep in the cinema stalls. Alongside The Carpenters and Scott Walker, declared influences range from Michel Legrand to Bernstein's West Side Story and the films of Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrellas of Cherbourg boasts music to make hearts sing. "It's almost hyper-romantic, which I love," explains Chris: "That way in music where you get to a point where your heart can't actually take anymore."

Radiant and rapturous, 'It's Only a Love Song' takes you right there.