“It’s good to be back!” yelled the singer of a legendary Nineties indie rock band from Manchester who’ve been away too long, “This one’s for all the lads in the audience!” No, not that legendary Nineties indie rock band from Manchester, but a homecoming Charlatans are every bit as beloved.
Since their last album, 2017’s Different Days, polymath singer Tim Burgess has become more than an iconic indie frontman, solo artist, author, actor, label boss, festival coffee shop proprietor, breakfast cereal imagineer and yellow-haired human lighthouse. He’s now a bona fide national treasure. His Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties – during which he and celebrity musical guests would tweet along to classic albums as everyone played them along at home – were a communal sonic lifeline through the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 and the last good thing ever to happen on Twitter/X. As the Listening Parties wended their way towards Absolute Radio, Burgess kept himself occupied with wildly imaginative and experimental solo albums – 2022’s Typical Music was anything but – and his original baggy-turned-Britpop-turned-funk-soul band seemed a fading concern.
