Tim Burgess Announces New Solo Album 'Typical Music'

Tim Burgess announces the release of his new solo album. The frontman of legendary British band, The Charlatans, singer-songwriter, Tim's Twitter Listening Party creator and author's sixth solo LP, TYPICAL MUSIC arrives via Bella Union Records on Friday, September 23. Pre-orders and pre-saves are available now.

Produced at Wales' famed Rockfield Studio by longtime collaborator Daniel O'Sullivan (Grumbling Fur, Sunn O))), Ulver), TYPICAL MUSIC includes the captivating new single and title track, "Typical Music," available today at all DSPs and streaming services. An official music video - directed by 7x MTV Video Music Awards-winner Kevin Godley (U2, Sting, Blur) - premieres today via YouTube.

TYPICAL MUSIC was first heralded this spring by the acclaimed first single and album opener, "Here Comes The Weekend," available now at all DSPs and streaming services. Hailed by NME as "uplifting, romantic," the track arrived alongside a Kevin Godley-directed companion video streaming now via YouTube.

Tim Burgess is a proper polymath, a hyperactive multi-talent whose long remarkable career encompasses over three decades as lead singer and frontman of The Charlatans, five diverse solo albums, three unique memoirs, the foundation of the prismatic O Genesis label, and more than 1000 installments of the now-beloved Tim's Twitter Listening Party.

Conceived by Burgess in March 2020 at the dawn of the pandemic era, the ingenious online events brought people around the world together through real-time album playbacks via Twitter, featuring stories from bands and fans, rarely seen images, and exclusive insights and anecdotes from the artists who created some of music's most iconic albums.

The pandemic years also saw Burgess's own rambling creative muse in full gear, with new songs emerging at a spectacularly rampant pace. A 22-track double album, TYPICAL MUSIC sees him offering up a collection of original material as expansive and diverse as it is rich, funky, and fun, embracing heartache, love, and free-form studio experimentation through a gamut of musical approaches spanning sparkling psych-pop, sci-fi punk, magic disco, kosmische soul, wiggy electronica, and more.

"OK, we all know about double albums, right?," says Tim Burgess. "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. 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."

Burgess brought his burgeoning batch of songs to the world-famous Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, Wales, a storied establishment that held powerful memories for him, including the recording of The Charlatans' 1997 landmark, TELLIN' STORIES, an experience irreparably tarnished by the death of the keyboard player Rob Collins in a car crash at the bottom of the lane while making that album.

Though Burgess hadn't properly been back to Rockfield in almost 25 years, he now felt ready to return, this time joined by a pair of truly inspired collaborators in Daniel O'Sullivan, a gifted multi-instrumentalist, producer, and member of his live band, and visionary keyboard/synth wizard Thighpaulsandra (Julian Cope, Coil, Spiritualized).

Together the three musicians crafted a colorful, kaleidoscopic universe all its own, working as one to bring Burgess's far-flung songcraft to vivid life. The result is a double album in the classic tradition - an epic cavalcade of wildly divergent songs that serve as a grand testament to its creator's infinite scope of ambitious ideas, from the primal twang of "Sooner Than Yesterday" and loose-hipped "Revenge Through Art" to the rippling "Kinetic Connection" and spaced-out love song, "Take Me With You." Teeming with myriad sonic approaches, dizzying invention, and a veritable hurricane of human emotions, TYPICAL MUSIC is anything but.

"I fell in love with the world again," Burgess says. "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."

Watch the new music video here:

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