It certainly didn’t feel like many good folks had good things happen to them during 2020, but through the vehicle of Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties – where people would gather on social media to share their thoughts on an album, with the artists providing commentary as virtual guests – The Charlatans singer Tim Burgess deservedly found himself the recipient of lorry-loads of goodwill and with his profile the highest it’d been in decades.
Whilst the Wulfrunians have continued to release music at regular intervals, their commercial peak arguably came with 1997’s Tellin’ Stories, since when Burgess has explored a solo career before coming to prominence again with a simple idea that united people in a common love of music, one nearing its thousandth episode.
A 30th anniversary treat delayed by you-know-what, Head Full Of Ideas has been compiled to function at a number of different levels; if you just want the hits there’s a succinct, hummable grab-bag, from the Madchester era (The Only One I Know, Weirdo) through to some Britpop belters (North Country Boy, One To Another, the still peerless Just When You’re Thinking Things Over). For the really curious there’s even room for a late period renaissance (the soulful Come Home Baby, Let The Good Times Be Never Ending, Plastic Machinery).
Unlike most of their contemporaries (whom they’ve pretty much all outlasted), The Charlatans were always a fully functioning live unit, and the thirteen-track performance segment adds some heft to that view.
Burgess wasn’t without an opinion, introducing Can’t Even Be Bothered as, ‘One of the greatest records ever written by any man or woman in the history of the world’, but their organ dominated early years are faithfully represented by a surefire version of Indian Rope, with an epic Glastonbury performance of Then and a sprawling nine-minute rendering of Sproston Green all six-hitting reminders of a blinder.
If this isn’t enough to satisfy you then the (almost) all-you-can eat buffet offers even more, spread over a 6-vinyl deluxe edition. Here, at the boss level, you can listen to eleven demos capturing the sound of various works in various stages of progress. Some are relatively polished sounding – Crystal Eyes, Commuters Computer – whilst the raw, live room feel of Always On My Mind lands more closely to the not-quite-ready tag.
Usually in a package like this however it’s the remixes segment that provides the most diversionary interest, and here this rule remains defiantly unbroken. Everyone from the Lo-Fidelity Allstars to Norman Cook are allowed a go and all of them complete their mission of bringing a new dimension to their source material.
But the unquestionable highlights are Sleaford Mods’ bony abduction of Plastic Machinery, The Chemical Brothers’ cosmic, rave-tastic version of Nine Acre Dust and finally Jagz Kooner’s transformation of the wistful My Beautiful Friend into a raging punk snarl off.
Tim Burgess didn’t really want a new day job, but when one came along he took it. Looking back from behind the barricades at a thirty-odd year career in music, for him and The Charlatans survival has meant employing many of the qualities the politicians told us we needed once we locked the world outside – tenacity, resilience, common sense, and empathy.
With triumph, tragedy and a hundred other experiences lurking in this rolling past to present, A Head Full Of Ideas is a celebration of a singer and band who’ve toughed it all out, in the process becoming unlikely national treasures.
