C Duncan - Alluvium (LP) - Yellow Vinyl

Alluvium finds C Duncan doing what he does best, but with a brighter tilt that suits him. Released on 6 May 2022 through Bella Union, it is his fourth album and his first for the label, a graceful pivot after his early run on FatCat. The title fits. These songs feel like they have been smoothed by time and carried downstream, fine layers of harmony and piano settling into place until the whole thing glows.

If you have followed him since Architect, the Mercury Prize nominated debut from 2015, the DNA is familiar. He still stacks his voice into those airy choral clusters that feel half sacred, half daydream. He still writes with a precise, classical ear, which makes sense given his conservatoire training in Glasgow. What has shifted is the light. Health, in 2019, leaned into heartbreak and heavier shades. Alluvium looks up. The melodies are looser at the shoulders, the rhythms lift rather than brood, and the arrangements smile without turning sugary.

Heaven set the tone when it landed as an early single. It moves with a gentle skip, a soft motor of drums under a spray of synth and guitar, while his multi tracked vocals braid and unbraid in little arcs of counterpoint. It is the kind of song you replay to catch some small thing you missed, a piano flourish here, a harmony tucked into the corner there. Torso of a Man pulls in the other direction, a touch darker and more interior, but still measured, still patient. You can hear how carefully he balances his palette, a few well chosen colors doing the work of a crowd.

Part of the pleasure here is how tactile it all feels. Duncan is one of those studio minimalists who can make a handful of parts feel like a full chamber group. A close mic on a guitar brush, the soft air of a room around a piano, a muted kick that keeps your head nodding, then a sudden swell of voices. Nothing clangs. Nothing blares. Even when the chorus opens up, there is restraint, as if he wants the song to breathe at body temperature rather than run hot. That touch is what separates Alluvium from the lush sprawl you hear elsewhere in indie pop. It is composed, yes, but not fussy.

You can map a neat line from his early home recorded work to this record. Health brought in outside studio muscle and a different kind of sheen. Alluvium keeps the clarity, but you sense him taking the reins again, trusting his own instincts about space and blend. It suits the writing. These songs read like letters about steadier days, about settling into love and habit, about small renewals. He has said often that he writes by ear, stacking harmonies until they lock. You hear that craftsmanship in the way refrains arrive right where your ear wants them, in the way a bass note changes the weather of a verse.

On vinyl the record is a joy. The low end is warm and honest, the vocals sit just forward of the instruments, and the stereo field has that soft C Duncan shimmer that turns a living room into a little chapel. If you are hunting for Alluvium vinyl, you will want a clean copy to let the layers breathe. It also pairs beautifully with his earlier work if you are building out a small run of C Duncan albums on vinyl, the kind of sequence that makes sense on a quiet Sunday morning with coffee. And if you like to buy C Duncan records online, most indie shops have kept up with it, though I still recommend a browse in a Melbourne record store if you can. There is something nice about spotting a Bella Union spine in the wild, even for those of us scrolling through vinyl records Australia after hours.

In the larger story of his catalog, Alluvium feels like a gentle turn toward daylight. It keeps the architectural detail that made Architect stand out and the emotional honesty that gave Health its weight, but it trades drama for poise. No grand gestures, just songs that stay with you because they are built to last. If you are new, start here and work back. If you are already in, you will hear why C Duncan vinyl continues to reward repeated spins. This is one of those records that will quietly become a fixture on your shelf, the one you reach for when you want music that holds the room without raising its voice.