CHARLATANS leader Tim Burgess is buzzing about the veteran indie band's upcoming tour, which will climax with a pair of Irish dates next month.
However, before he can hit the road for the first headline shows in support of the group's excellent new record, Different Days, he'll have to escape from his cat.
"He's actually lying on me right now," Burgess says of Gaia, his 'studio cat', who apparently keeps things in the Charlatans man's back garden-based home recording facility from becoming too relaxed.
"He's Siamese and pretty irritating. I mean, he's cool – but a bit evil. His claws are always out and he's always scratching me or biting me. I don't think it's affectionate either!"
Now a few years clean and sober after surviving notoriously hedonistic periods living in London and Los Angeles, Burgess (50) has traded the bright lights for an idyllic sounding existence in the wilds of Norfolk alongside his partner Nik (of Scottish experimentalists Factory Floor) and their young son, Morgan.
The back garden studio helps satisfy a fiercely creative streak, which sees the Charlatans frontman putting out solo records on his own label, O Genesis, as well as running his Tim Peaks 'boutique empire' (coffee, cereal, colouring books, listening parties, pop-up festival events) in the spare moments not occupied by family life and being the face of one of British indie rock's most beloved bands.
The Charlatans also have their own studio, Big Mushroom, where they created Different Days with the help of some special guest musicians and singers.
This was partly born out of necessity – tragically, original drummer Jon Brookes died in 2013 and has not been replaced, though ex-Verve man Pete Salisbury now plays with the band regularly live and on record – but also just for fun.
Different Days includes contributions from an impressive and varied list of names including Steven and Gillian from New Order, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller, crime fiction star Ian Rankin and an unlikely cameo from the Irish-raised co-creator/writer and star of TV hit Catastrophe, Sharon Horgan.
"I quite like bouncing ideas off other people – that's always one good reason to do collaborations," explains Burgess.
"But with this album, obviously the necessity thing was a major factor. For a lot of the songs myself and Mark would bring to the table, we were thinking of very tight and precise drumming – and Steven Morris is your man for that.
"Luckily, we had his number and he lives about a 20 minute drive away from our studio. Then one day he brought Gillian (Gilbert), who played on Over Again.
"Johnny [Marr] came over too, as he also lives quite close. We've known him personally since 1997 or something like that and he also played a few shows with us around the time of [the album] Wonderland.
"I told him to bring his guitar and asked him to play on a song, if he liked it. About half an hour later, he'd played on it, loved it, become part of it and wanted to hear more and do more. He just would have gone on and on, really.
"He also brought some tea that he liked – he doesn't drink coffee – and some books. That's the great thing about being in the studio behind closed doors: you can be making some music, telling stuff that you don't want other people to hear, drinking tea. It can be a very enjoyable experience.
"The studio just became a very social world. I feel really lucky that we got all those people involved."
As for how Sharon Horgan came to contribute backing vocals to the album's title track, it stemmed from a mutual appreciation between Burgess and the Hackney-based writer/actor and long-time Charlatans fan, who connected via social media in 2015.
"I had Sharon in mind to do a backing vocal even though I didn't know if she could sing," reveals the frontman, a massive fan of Catastrophe and Horgan in general.
"But she's my friend and I really wanted her involved somehow. I figured that she's such a great communicator that it would be a piece of cake.
"I think that, in her head, she was trying to say 'no', but then in her heart she couldn't. She had the least amount of time at the studio: she came up quite late after doing an edit on Catastrophe and it was just so great that she took time out of her busy day to do it.
"I had no idea that she'd be so into it and I'm such a fan of hers – so it's amazing that those sort of things can happen."
Although Different Days was released to great acclaim back in May, The Charlatans spent their summer playing festival dates – not traditionally an ideal time to be throwing a load of new material into the set.
Thus, Burgess is currently really looking forward to the first proper tour for the album, top tunes from which will be jockeying for position alongside The Charlatans' arsenal of 1990s hits and more recent favourites too.
"With the last album, Modern Nature, people really took it to their hearts," he enthuses of the group's 2013 LP.
"We've got seven tracks we could play from that album and there's at least seven we could play from this one, so we better start making the sets like two hours long!
"I'm really looking forward to doing Different Days into Future Tense into Plastic Machinery in sequence live. That's like 10 minutes or something and it's quite proggy I suppose, but I really think we did a good job on it.
"I don't want to give too much away but there will be visuals to go along with it as well.
He adds: "For the most part I think everything sounds better live because it's at an extreme volume.
"People are mostly used to listening to stuff on their laptop, so they come away thinking 'wow, that's so much better live!'"
:: The Charlatans, December 10, The Academy, Dublin / December 11, The Limelight, Belfast. Tickets via Ticketmaster.ie
