There have been suggestions that Tim Burgess should receive some form of accolade for bringing music fans together during lockdown, ideas posited including Godlike Genius at next year’s NME Awards.
There’s no doubt his Twitter Listening Parties are a wonderful initiative, encompassing a huge range of album choices, some of which have acted as moving tributes to Little Richard and Florian Schneider, and others that have given newer artists the opportunity to showcase their music to a wider audience.
Owing to the organic and amateur nature of the venture, ideas are allowed to blossom; the Listening Party website directs viewers to independent record stores, and there’s a full festival on the way. However, there’s a strong argument for Burgess to be the recipient of some form of accolade even without these listening parties.
Now on his fourth decade in the business – with thirteen Charlatans albums and this, his fifth solo album, under his belt – Burgess is clearly driven by a passion for music, equally demonstrated by his forays into running labels and writing. His solo albums have been notable by their eclecticism: I Believe was quasi-Americana; Same Language, Different Worlds was pulsing electronica; Oh No I Love You featured slow-tempo indie. Now, Burgess has taken things up a notch by recording an album that offers huge sonic variation from its first track onwards.
The gospel rockabilly of opener and first single Empathy For The Devil contains Chic-style guitar and a violin solo alongside the now infamous pilfering of the opening of The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry and the Stones-tribute title. Comme D-Habitude is similarly brimming with ideas as light reggae, music hall and avant-jazz all vie for attention before a dreamy saxophone floats us out. Elsewhere, the LA-indebted Sweet Old Sorry Me fuses blaxploitation guitar with mid-1970s Elton John, while the elegant sadness of Undertow is an album highlight. Best of all is The Warhol Me, a New York indebted number that screams New York before morphing into a pulsing, near-prog jam. The track has the ecstatic feel of club music and is a real career best.
The album is broadly autobiographical – with Burgess writing the songs in either Los Angeles (evidenced best by the sunny Lucky Creatures) or at his home in Norfolk – most obviously on the track Timothy which seems to act as advice to his younger self (‘we gotta get out of this place, when the music starts it fills my heart’), although Burgess has been quick to suggest that not everything is as it seems.
Despite moments of melancholy and apparent self-reflection, The Charlatan’s trademark optimism still pervades; the knowing wink of Only Took A Year (a reference to the album’s gestation period, in contrast to the near-decade wait for previous album As I Was Now) is pure breeziness, while I Got This is positivity in its purest form.
Tim Burgess isn’t shy about his shortcomings (despite writing the songs by himself for the first time), enlisting Factory Floor’s Nik Void and Daniel O’Sullivan among others, all of who were given free reign to contribute to the musical aesthetic of the record. All have played their part in delivering the best solo album Burgess has made, with high points that match his day job in The Charlatans.
The Twitter Listening Party for I Love The New Sky should be fascinating.
