It’s a Monday night and we arrive in the Northern Quarter in Manchester. Car parked precariously on some double yellow lines we queue to get in to Band On The Wall, an alluring historically rich art deco building run by the charity Inner City Music. The venue is not-for-profit and serves to put on an eclectic variety of artists both local to Manchester and from all over the world.

The crowd is like a who’s who of Manc musical legacy, with Mani, Bonehead and John Robb all showing their faces and offering support for Tim’s solo tour.

Just starting as we arrive are The Gramotones. There seems to be a growing trend for male four piece bands with a thing for the 60s. These sharply dressed Oldham lads have a vintage feel and sound, with the vocal harmonies and catchy riffs akin to The Hollies and The Move. What they lack however is the usual pretentious attitude that seems to follow. In fact, the Gramotones are pretty much the opposite; down to earth and dead friendly, they thank the audience genuinely and seem self-deprecating and humble at every opportunity. There has been a bit of a growing hype for this band recently, with a few festival appearances under their vintage leather belts and a sought after Pretty Green in-store performance to boot. They could definitely hold their own much further up the bill.

Next up we take a completely different musical turn with Hot Vestry. These are much more modern indie with an electro, experimental feel. After supporting New Order and Johnny Marr earlier in the year the band have a definite place in the younger market and would rest quite nicely with bands like Foals and The Horrors.

O Genesis signings Hatcham Social are on next, again steering us in a different direction. Here we have rounded indie offerings, clearly crafted with hints of 70s psych pop and soft, mellow sounds not out of place on a north California beach.

A few pints and a casual chat with Mani later, Tim finally takes to the stage. He enters and stands centre stage, spotlight above, addressing a hushed room of silent expectation. His blonde ethereally illuminated hair and zipped up parka depicting him as some sort of Brit-pop Gabriel, he reads a spoken word version of ‘A Case For Vinyl’ littered with nasal northern tones. Quite a touching moment! Paul Weller apparently said that this is one of the best tracks Burgess has ever recorded, and even stripped back like this it is captivating. After enthusiastic and deserved applause the band plunges in to “The Doors of Then”, Tim shouting “It’s good to be back!”.

Tim covers Arthur Russell’s ‘I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face’, with some of the lyrics taking on a more poignant message, not going unnoticed with crowd members. In fact, at one point the crowd chant for Tim and Jon Brookes.

There are less calls for Charlatans tunes than I would have expected, and a very small self-indulgent  part of me was hoping Tim would give us more, but by no means does this take away from the set that was presented to us. It consisted mainly of tracks from ‘Oh No I Love You’, with ‘Tobacco Fields’ and ‘Anytime Minutes’ given a less polished feel than we see on the album, more venturing out to the country sound that inevitably filters through given the lyrics were a combination of Tim’s and Kurt Wagner’s imaginations.

Tim does throw in a few Charlatans classics, albeit reworked and developed versions. We see an acoustic, more mature rendition of the now “indie anthem” ‘The Only One I Know’, and also another reworked classic with ‘North Country Boy’. We are thrown another Charlatan shaped crowd pleaser with ‘Impossible’ that gets arms in the air and the vocal chords going.

Tonight has a less a feel of your standard gig, but more a sense of being invited into Tim’s life size musical mood-board, and yet again Tim proves he can do no wrong.