Tim Burgess
Tim Burgess announces new album Typical Music, due 23rd September via Bella Union, and shares video for the albums title track.
Photography credit: Cat Stevens
A 22-track double album, Typical Music is a blockbuster set of songs that are expansive and diverse that delve into heartache and love. Returning to Rockfield for the first time in almost 25 years where the The Charlatans recorded their celebrated 1997 album Tellin’ Stories which lead to some of their biggest hits in One To Another & North Country Boy but also the untimely passing of the bands original keyboardist Rob Collins in a car crash at the bottom of the lane leading to the studio.
Talking about the new album Burgess explains “OK: we all know about double albums, right?, Historically, they've been thought of as indulgent. But I came to the conclusion that what I was doing was the opposite of that. I wanted to give people everything that I'd done. And everything that I brought to the studio and worked on with the guys, I coloured them all in equally. Every idea was treated as if it was the best thing and had to be treated with extreme care. I wanted to give everything of myself. That was it.”
Heading into the studio this time with Thighpaulsandra (the legendary keyboard, synthesiser and production wizard who’s played with Coil, Julian Cope and Spiritualized) and Daniel O’Sullivan (ex-Grumbling Fur multi-instrumentalist who’s released records on Burgess’s O Genesis label, played on I Love The New Sky and is a member of Burgess's live band).
“I wanted to challenge us all. I wanted to do more electronic things. I wanted to expand the sound. We were limited in what we could do because of Covid, but we had orchestras in our brains. But we just did it as the three of us.”
To highlight but three songs from Typical Music: ‘Revenge Through Art’ is loose-hipped, chewy funk. ‘Kinetic Connection’ offers up sparkling psyche-pop, wiggy electronics weaving in and out of rippling piano. ‘Take Me With You’ is a space-soul love song.
“I fell in love with the world again,” he explains of the latter's lyrical origins. “During Covid, I read a pile of books, got better on guitar. I had new perspective. I wanted to learn how to be Tim Burgess who makes solo records. People have a vision of me as the singer in The Charlatans. That's not going to change. Then there's me as the Twitter guy. But I just fell in love with the world again and wanted the world to take me with them.”
Elsewhere on the album there are songs for his young son, and for his dad, who passed away in April 2020. There is, too, the twangy gallop of the title track. Or, as Burgess puts it, excitedly: “It's definitely sci-fi, and primal as well. Brian Jones on teardrop guitar. Or Will Sergeant, early Bunnymen. Banshees, even. Daft Punk! And then ‘Sooner Than Yesterday’ is the same,” he adds of another moment of absolute torch’n’twang, “but in monochrome. It's more English.”
Overall, that fed into his vision for Typial Music, to wit: “I wanted to write sci-fi punk songs, or sci-fi surf songs. I was listening to a lot of Joe Meek and Kim Fowley, and lots of the songs are two minutes long. I think the average length is just over three minutes. I like that.”
Together Burgess, “Thipes” and O’Sullivan have crafted a colourful, kaleidoscopic created when the world outside was so black and white and beaten down. “That was totally the goal,” affirms Tim Burgess. “In my most far-out thoughts, I thought of it as like we built a spaceship that was hermetically sealed, a crew of three. And we just wanted to transcend the mire.”
Preorder Typical Music Here
Tim Burgess UK live dates:
Tuesday 7th June – Brighton – Komedia
Saturday 11th June – Matlock – Signals 2022
Monday 13th June – Newcastle – Riverside
Tuesday 14 June – Glasgow – St Luke’s
Thursday 16th June – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
Friday 17th June – Birmingham – Caste & Falcon
Friday 24th June – Newport – Le Pub
Sunday 26 June – Pilton – Glastonbury Festival
Thurs 14th – Sun 17th July – Stirling – Doune The Rabbit Hole
Thurs 21st – Sun 24th July – Macclesfield – Bluedot Festival
Tuesday 8th November – Bristol – Fleece
Wednesday 9th November – London – Lafayette
Thursday 10th November – Manchester – O2 Ritz
