It’s easy for the uninitiated to look at Tim Minchin’s Time Machine as an odd assortment of greatest hits. But it really is an emotional and artistically brave revisiting of older material.
Minchin’s announcement on his website about the album states, “All 11 songs were written in my 20s, now reimagined and finally properly studio-recorded for the first time. Some have been played on stages all over the world, and some have barely ever been heard; some are pretty silly and some are very chill; but all are tunes that I think have stood the test of time… ish.”
To me, it’s bold of any artist to attempt much less to accomplish something like this. The idea of going back to revisit and rerecord something you wrote in your 20s seems daunting. I know I have things I wrote in my 20s that I’d rather not revisit for any number of reasons..
Some of these tracks have been recorded before. “Rock n’ Roll Nerd,” for example, was on three of his comedy performance albums, Darkside, So F**cking Rock Live, and Tim Minchin and the Heritage Orchestra. But this version, like all the other tracks on this album is the first studio version.
Minchin has said that the album is “not a comedy record (though there’s plenty of joy and musical foolery), nor is it a chin-stroker (but there is plenty of loveliness).”
I get it, but maybe I’m supposed to. I was a fan of Minchin’s comedy, I simply adored his 2020 album Apart Together, and I’ve enjoyed many of his other artistic endeavours. But the thing I respect the most is what he said in an interview with themusic.com.au:
“I’m engaged in a completely privileged and luxurious journey of making art that I want to make and letting the audience who want to find it find it, and not examining what those numbers are.”
While being both “privileged” and “luxurious,” it does show how comfortable he is being the artist he wants to be instead of being one of those hustle artists that is always looking for the next milestone in dollars or measurable numbers.
This album is best described as eclectic. Ballads, swing, blues, rock, pop – this album defies a singular classification. I’ve explained Tim Minchin’s work to others around me at “smart music,” and perhaps that’s the genre this deserves. Minchin writes with intelligence, whether it is for laughs or full of emotion. He doesn’t dumb down his music or his lyrical output for the lowest common denominator. I hesitate to call it high art, but it does contrast with popular art, so it might as well be.
I’m physically removed from Minchin’s career in Australia, and an ocean away from where his career took off in the United Kingdom. For me, a revisiting of stuff he wrote in his 20s, especially songs that haven’t made it to albums I’ve had access to, is like discovering your favorite show has a season you haven’t watched yet.
You’ve already bought into the world, so you just get to sit back and enjoy something new because you really enjoy the old. That’s admittedly odd, because this stuff is in fact old, but it’s new to me.
“Understand It” was new to me, as was “I Wouldn’t Like You,” “Ruby,” “The Song of The Masochist,” “Pop Song,” “Moment of Bliss,” and “If All You Ever Had Was Love.” But it felt familiar. Meanwhile, the stuff I knew – “You Grew On Me,” “Rock n Roll Nerd,” and “Not Perfect” – were beautifully treated to full studio versions to become as beloved as the original live recordings fans know and love.
As evidence from the man himself, Minchin said in one interview, “I’m not particularly engaged with how [the music] lands… Not because I don’t care whether people care about my songs, but they don’t get in the Hottest 100, they don’t get played a thousand times in 10 weeks by three different radio stations in Australia and a hundred overseas, they just sit in the world and people start clicking on them a little bit and my little niche audience loves it.”
Well, I’m part of that little niche audience, and I do love it. I also love his cheeky little aside following up that sentiment: “And by the way, there could be a Time Machine Volume Two, if people like this, ‘cause there’s a shit load.”
Well, Mr. Minchin, if you, in your infinite artistic judgement, decide to follow up an original album like Apart Together, or ride the reception of Time Machine for a Time Machine Volume Two, there’s at least one North American that is excited for whatever comes next.