Tim Burgess announces double album ‘Typical Music’ and shares title track

Tim Burgess has announced a forthcoming double album, ‘Typical Music’, and shared its title track – listen below.

The 22-track ‘Typical Music’ arrives on September 23 via Bella Union (pre-order here). It marks the follow-up to The Charlatans frontman’s fifth album ‘I Love the New Sky‘ which was released in 2020.

Yesterday (June 6) Burgess posted the music video for the album’s lead single and title track. Watch the Kevin Godley-directed clip below.

Advertisement

Burgess said in a statement accompanying the album news: “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,” he said.

Burgess recorded the album at Rockfield, the famous farmyard recording establishment in Wales that has had memories both good and bad for the musician.

The Charlatans recorded 1997’s ‘Tellin’ Stories’ at Rockfield, including the album’s landmark single ‘One To Another’. But the band’s original keyboard player Rob Collins died in a car crash at the bottom of a lane near the studio in 1996.

Burgess hadn’t properly been back to Rockfield in nearly 25 years but felt it was now time to revisit. He worked with legendary keyboardist Thighpaulsandra as well as ex-Grumbling Fur multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan over the course of 30 days at the studio.

Advertisement

“I just wanted more,” Burgess added of the writing and recording process for his sixth solo album. “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.”

Director Godley, meanwhile, said of the video for the album’s title track: “’Typical Music’ sounds like an out of control ‘something’ moving at improbable speed, hoping bits don’t fall off before it crashes, and that chaotic propulsion is what this film is about.

“We shot in a tiny room using 3 hand-held cameras, the most effective being a GoPro with a 360-degree lens that Tim filmed himself with whilst literally bouncing off the walls, his performer’s understanding of its potential giving the film exactly the kind of warp speed jeopardy I was looking for.”

‘Typical Music’ tracklist:

01. ‘Here Comes The Weekend’
02. ‘Curiosity’
03. ‘Time That We Call Time’
04. ‘Flamingo’
05. ‘Revenge Through Art’
06. ‘Kinetic Connection’
07. ‘Typical Music’
08. ‘Take Me With You’
09. ‘After This’
10. ‘The Centre Of Me (Is A Symphony Of You)’
11. ‘When I See You’
12. ‘Magic Rising’
13. ‘Tender Hooks’
14. ‘L.O.S.T. Lost / Will You Take A Look At My Hand Please’
15. ‘A Bloody Nose’
16. ‘In May’
17. ‘Slacker (Than I’ve Ever Been)’
18. ‘View From Above’
19. ‘Quarter To Eight’
20. ‘Sooner Than Yesterday’
21. ‘Sure Enough’
22. ‘What’s Meant For You Won’t Pass By You’

In other recent news, Burgess has launched a jacket inspired by the one that he wore in the video for The Charlatans’ single ‘How High’, marking the song’s 25th anniversary.

The track was released in 1997 and appeared on the band’s fifth album ‘Tellin’ Stories’. In the music video, the frontman donned a yellow and black jacket.

“The question I get asked the most about The Charlatans isn’t ‘How does it feel to headline a festival?’ or ‘What was it like writing a banger like ‘The Only One I Know’?’,” Burgess told NME. “Nope. It’s ‘Where’s the jacket from in the ‘How High’ video?’