Danny Elfman announces first solo album in 37 years (stream “True”)

Composer and former Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman has been releasing new songs every month for a while now, and he's just announced that they're all part of Big Mess, his first solo album in 37 years. “I knew from the start that this wasn’t going to be a neat, easy-to-categorize record,” says Elfman. “It was always destined to be this crazy cacophony, because that’s who I am. The Big Mess is me.” The album's out June 11 via ANTI-/Epitaph

The songs were born out of quarantine-inspired creativity. “Once I began writing," Danny says, “It was like opening a Pandora’s box and I found I couldn’t stop. None of it was planned. I had no idea how many songs I would write but from the start it quickly became a 2-sided project with heavily contrasting and even conflicting tones." Helping him make the album were drummer Josh Freese (Devo, Weezer, The Vandals), bassist Stu Brooks (Dub Trio, Lady Gaga, Lauryn Hill), and guitarists Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses) and Nili Brosh (Tony MacAlpine, Paul Gilbert).

Big Mess features 17 new Elfman songs and a reworking of Oingo Boingo's 1982 song "Insects." The new single from the album is "True," a near-industrial track that also works in Danny's orchestral tendencies. The video was directed by Sarah Sitkin, who also created the album's artwork from a series of 3-D body scans. You can watch that, and check out Big Mess' artwork and tracklist, below.

TRACKLIST:
1. Sorry
2. True
3. In Time
4. Everybody Loves You
5. Dance With The Lemurs
6. Serious Ground
7. Choose Your Side
8. We Belong
9. Happy
10. Just A Human
11. Devil Take Away
12. Love In The Time Of Covid
13. Native Intelligence
14. Better Times
15. Cruel Compensation
16. Kick Me
17. Get Over It
18. Insects