As is customary, a toast for the host. The Charlatans’ singer and lockdown legend Tim Burgess has been so busy celebrating other people’s records, as the virtual needle dropper and party starter of his nightly Twitter listening parties, that there’s a danger of his own new album release – his fifth solo record – being swamped beneath the tsunami of nostalgia he’s created.
Burgess’ journey from LA party king through divorce, relocation, his years as the experimental Svengali of north London’s warehouse scene and finally to settled family life in Norfolk: it’s all touched on here, albeit beneath layers of lyrical obfuscation and characteristically sunny vibes. ‘Empathy For The Devil’ reads like a marital row – “is that jealousy? What d’you want, a medal?” – even though it skips along sounding like Sufjan Stevens has joined ‘Too-Rye-Ay’-era Dexys, and cheekily nabs its intro from ‘Boys Don’t Cry’.
‘Sweet Old Sorry Me’ sees him recall extricating himself from the Hollywood drug “tribe” over golden age Sunset Strip strings and the kind of piano thumps that made Benny And The Jets fictional superstars. And although self-portrait ‘Timothy’ makes the unexpected confession “I can count all my friends on one hand / One of them lives in Japan”, the lyric arrives during a jaunty psych-pop interlude that’ll have you checking for the paw prints of Super Furry Animals.
Burgesss is no wallower. His darker reminiscences are tempered with optimism and musical catharsis and he couches his story in an array of the dreamiest sonic styles: plush alt-country, Beach Boys surf-psych, ambient electronic drones, space funk and multi-harmonied soft rock. Even when he’s bemoaning a 12-month bout of writer’s block on ‘Only Took A Year’, it sounds like he knocked it out in a four-minute harpsichord dream-pop reverie. “What’s your favourite Cure LP? I like ‘Pornography’,” he sings, sounding about as goth as Brian Wilson’s jacuzzi.
Most dominant amid this melting stylistic miasma is a kind of retro-futurist easy listening feel; neo-Bacharach, if you will. Tracks such as the pensive ‘Undertow’, ‘Lucky Creatures’ and consumerist rumination ‘The Mall’, for instance, sound like they’ve blasted off from the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino on a mission to explore the Tuxedo Nebula. It all adds to a blissed-out attitude that peaks on the album’s melodic high-points ‘Sweetheart Mercury’ and ‘I Got This’, the former a gorgeous piece of electronic Mersey-pop and the latter a preview of what it might sound like if Tim ever double-booked a Flaming Lips listening party with Stereolab.
Unravelling fresh surprises with each listen, ‘I Love The New Sky’ is the sort of immersive cult-pop experience that should break the ‘trending’ column in its own right.
Release date: May 22
Record label: Bella Union
