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Apr 12, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Jacob Boll

Film composer (and former Oingo Boingo frontman) Danny Elfman has announced his first new solo album in 37 years, Big Mess, and shared a new single from it, “True,” via a video for the track. Big Mess is due out June 11 via ANTI-/Epitaph and also features four other singles he’s shared in the last few months. Check out the “True” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

In October of last year Elfman shared the album’s “Happy,” which was his first solo single in 36 years. Since then he’s shared three other singles that show up on Big Mess: “Sorry,” “Love in the Time of Covid,” and “Kick Me.” But don’t worry there are 18 tracks in all on the album, so there are still 13 more songs to discover.

Sarah Sitkin directed the “True” video and had this to say about it in a press release: “The video is an exploration of fractured identity, muffled through the lens of memory. Danny is a central figure within the video, yet only in his reproduced likeness via prosthetics, masks, and 3D printed body parts. I wanted to make a video that was gritty, unpolished and uncomfortable.”

The album came together during the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine. “Once I began writing,” Elfman explains in a press release, “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 two-sided project with heavily contrasting and even conflicting tones.”

One track on the album, “Insects,” is a reworked Oingo Boingo song. Elfman’s last solo album was 1984’s So-Lo. Since then he’s been a prolific film composer, often working with Tim Burton (Batman, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dumbo, and many more), but also working with plenty of other filmmakers on many big films (the original version of Justice League, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, Good Will Hunting, all four Men in Black movies, Milk, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, Hulk, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, among a multitude of others).

Big Mess also features drummer Josh Freese (Devo, Wheezer, 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).

Even though the album is due out in June, Elfman will also be releasing a limited edition Big Mess box set this fall. It will feature unreleased remixes and alternate versions of songs, as well as collectable artwork, a USB with video content and bonus material, and an artbook “featuring Sarah Sitkin’s original creations and never before seen photos and ephemera.”

Summing up the album, Elfman says: “I knew from the start that this wasn’t going to be a neat, easy-to-categorize record. It was always destined to be this crazy cacophony, because that’s who I am. The Big Mess is me.”

Big Mess 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

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