Tim Burgess has a new album on the way.
Titled I Love The New Sky, the 12-track album sees Burgess switching up his usual writing process and penning everything himself. You can watch a video for lead track ‘Empathy For The Devil’ above.
"In the past, I’ve written collaboratively," Burgess says. “[2012’s] Oh No I Love You was written with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner in Nashville, and then Same Language, Different Worlds was a collaboration with Peter Gordon who had worked extensively with Arthur Russell."
He set about writing the album in Norfolk, "in the middle of the countryside, with the nearest shop eight miles away," he says. "There are no distractions, and I guess that way things happen. I wrote everything on acoustic guitar, and the chords were really considered. The guitar lines would lead the melody, and the melody would inform the lyrics – just dreaming away with music."
Grumbling Fur’s Daniel O’Sullivan assists on arranging and production duties, and plays bass, drums and piano across the record. It’s a connection, Sullivan says, that came about via tQ.
"I used to know pretty much all the stuff they were writing about, but then their album of the year for 2013 was Glynnaestra by Grumbling Fur, and I really fell in love with it," he recalls. "I started talking to the band about working together. To cut a long story short I recorded a song with Grumbling Fur, they remixed two Charlatans tracks and a couple of Daniel O’Sullivan’s solo albums came out on my label."
Bella Union will release I Love The New Sky on May 22.
