Bruno Major Announces 'Columbo' Album With Title Track Video

05-23-2023

Album art

(The Oriel Co) U.K. singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bruno Major announces his new album Columbo, to be released on July 21st via Harbour Artists & Music / AWAL Recordings.

Columbo is Bruno's highly-anticipated follow up to 2020's To Let a Good Thing Die. The 12-track body of work weaves the autobiographical with the observational and stretches Bruno's palette into new forms, yielding the most accomplished and "honest" expression of his music to date. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, Bruno was holed up at his parents' house in Northampton, where he first faced a blank slate, followed quickly by personal crisis. When restrictions lifted, he hotfooted to Los Angeles and hired a vintage ivory white 1978 Mercedes 380SL - he named it Columbo. It was on one fateful day during LA's golden hour that his car came to its own abrupt end, plowing into another vehicle. It was there that the melancholic melody for "Columbo," the album's wistful title track, emerged, and so the story goes.

"Columbo" pairs Bruno's ethereal voice with a simple guitar melody, resulting in a track evocative of the classic American songbook. Paul Simon's influence courses through the title track's intricate guitar pattern and aching vocals as Bruno's harmonies multiply and swell into a stunning vocal apex. The song conjures feelings of Spring, while the lyrics tell a different story, of love, loss, and freedom. Its accompanying visualizer plays into the nostalgia evoked by the star of the music video, Bruno's 1978 Mercedes 380SL. A vintage, film-like filter coats each shot, emphasizing the timeless beauty of "Columbo."

"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," Bruno reveals. "The album investigates my personal relationships with people and other things. It is self-diagnosis on a grand scale."

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 cozy fireside intimacy of Neil Young's "Out on the Weekend." Elsewhere, "Tell Her" is a slice of simmering R&B, while the heart-breaking "Tears in Rain" is dedicated to his late grandmother. "The End" rounds off the album, featuring a soaring solo that recalls perennial influence, Queen, and more pertinently, Brian May. 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.

The latest single and album title track follows "We Were Never Really Friends"released earlier this month to critical acclaim. Billboard chronicles the track as "...a classic spoil-the-friendship jam that masquerades as a piano ballad before blooming into a lighters-up rock sing-along, complete with a stringy guitar solo. Major's patience stands out here: the British singer-songwriter never presses too hard in any direction on the song, letting the full instrumentation and the slight quiver in his voice carry home his first new music since 2020." Ones To Watch raves, "'We Were Never Really Friends' is a stunning re-introduction for Bruno Major. Glimmering with all of the heart-aching tones we know the songwriter for, alongside lively classic rock influences, this song hints at exciting ventures in this new era [for the artist]" and Genius praises its "piano-driven '70s sound reminiscent of The Beatles and Elton John."

Columbo tracklist:
1. The Show Must Go On
2. Tell Her
3. Columbo
4. We Were Never Really Friends
5. When Can We Be
6. A Strange Kind Of Beautiful
7. You Take The High Road
8. 18
9. Tears In Rain (for Granny)
10. St. Mary's Terrace
11. Trajectories
12. The End