For those unaware, there’s been a long tradition of musicians from the north of England honoring their origins through their recordings - one that dates back as far as The Beatles’ penning Penny Lane.

North Country Boy, Hit The North, Life In A Northern Town, The North At Its Heights, It’s Grim Up North are just a few of the dozens that, over the following years, have championed its mass.

Both culturally and creatively, the North tends to form more than the average core of an artist’s identity. It’s derived from a strong sense of pride in one’s place - not just its achievements, but in its character, humor, and resilience. Up north, grey isn’t seen as bleak, but as honest and real: a backdrop that has shaped an unpretentious outlook on all things life.

It engenders a sense of working through adversity, and through that, producing something vital, expressive and, well, frankly ... elevated. Now, through his third album dispatch, Waking Up In A Northern Town, singer, songwriter and BBMAK vocalist, Christian Burns makes his own mark in this grand practice.

1. Darker Days
2. Let Me Love You
3. Brave
4. Embers
5. Strangers
6. Fall To You
7. The Two Of Us
8. Undiscovered
9. I Will Follow
10. Diamond Dreams
11. Like A King
12. Won’t You Hurry

On what is his most personal project to date, Christian opens on the all-embracing Darker Days and the transportive Let Me Love You (with Mark Novas) before then gifting us the beat-driven Brave, the ethnically-hued Embers (with Banatti), and both the melodically fluctuating Strangers and the synth dream with Pretty Pink entitled Fall To You.

Along next is the soaring The Two Of Us (with Paul Thomas) and the veritably glistening, at first, latterly driven Undiscovered and they are in turn backed beautifully by the pulsing beauty of I Will Follow (with Little Foot), the engaging Diamond Dreams and the rhythmically cultured Like A King, the new recording coming to a close on the emotively impassioned Won’t You Hurry.

www.christianburns.com

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