The Charlatans are back home and back on form.

Middlewich is a curious place. Situated a handful of miles outside the heaving metropolis(!) of Crewe, it is best described, using the make-it-sound-better-than-it-really-is language of Weekend Break holiday brochures, as sleepy. It feels a bit like an extended retirement village, the kind of place you'd normally expect to go to visit your elderly grandparents. Certainly not the kind of place you'd expect to find the headquarters of one of the country's longest established and most successful bands. It is though, for in a converted mill building on the outskirts of town stands Big Mushroom, The Charlatans' rehearsal room/residential recording studio. Built a couple of years ago at the band's own expense, it is where they've recorded and mixed the majority of their last two albums, 1999's Us and Us Only, and the soon-to-be-released Wonderland. It is also a convenient meeting place for the band to get together and 'do their thing', especially since lead singer Tim Burgess moved to Los Angeles to be with his now-wife, Michelle. As such, it provides a perfect location for press days, and this is what brings the Fly to this tranquil part of the north west on a bright, sunny August afternoon.

As is so often the case with mass press days, things don't go quite according to plan. When we arrive, photographer Ben and myself, all seems calm and relaxed. We are shown to the fridge, invited to help ourselves, and find seats in the spacious living area, making ourselves at home with band members, press officers and journalists alike. There is a noticeable buzz amongst the band members, and all talk enthusiastically about life in general and their new album in particular. Lead singer Tim Burgess, who is most in demand for interviews and photo opportunities, pops his head in from time to time, usually in search of a fresh bottle of white wine with which to refill his glass, before excusing himself and getting on with his next fixture. Eventually, a few beers and a trip to the pie shop later, and an hour and a half behind schedule, our turn arrives, and I follow Tim downstairs to the main live room of the studio.

Sitting cross-legged on the one area of floor that isn't littered with instruments and equipment, I ask him what he thinks of the new album. 'In one word?' he asks. 'Ace!' He laughs. Laughing and Tim Burgess seem to go hand in hand. There is something almost childlike about his manner, as if he is still coming to terms, a decade after they first leapt into the charts, with the scale and longevity of the Charlatans' success. It is an endearing quality, as is the cheeky smile that's never far from his lips, and the fact that he occasionally bursts into song for no apparent reason. 'I think it's ace,' he continues, slightly more seriously, 'I think it's like a Trans-Atlantic, jet-lagged record, but that's doing it down. What we wanted to make was a modern day seventies California rock/soul record.' One phrase that's been used to describe the record (including in the band's latest biog, no less) is 'Sly and the Family Rolling Stone'. Tim has heard the phrase before, and is clearly aware that it's meant as a compliment, but that doesn't stop him voicing his displeasure. 'It's really obnoxious as well,' he says firmly, 'because there is only one Rolling Stones and one Sly and the Family Stone. There's only one Charlatans as well, and we try our best to look to those peers rather than what's going on around us. We don't follow all those stupid little moments, we try and go for the whole moment. I think we are what we claim to be, which is always nice.'

That's not to say that they ignore contemporary music, though. 'There's always good stuff going on. The way I look at it at the moment, The Strokes, right now, could end up being like the Talking Heads, which would be fantastic. But I just look to good music and no matter what decade, I just enjoy it. I emulate, I don't imitate.'

Wonderland represents a substantial shift in style compared to the band's earlier efforts. It is, perhaps, the biggest single step forward they've taken in their seven album, 11 year career. 'The first conscious step was making a faster record than the last one,' says Tim, acknowledging the change, 'because the last one could have been too slow. But we all love the last record and that's it - there's a consensus that we all love the last record. It was quite stripped down because we had to make it for the first time with our new keyboard player, at the time, Tony Rogers, so we had to strip the band down to find out what we had. And then as soon as we'd made that record it's like 'Chiiiiing!'

'Tony fulfilled his fitting-in dream. He says it was no problem, no problem at all, but I guess that's a bit of a front. His second or third gig was in front of 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people, and I wouldn't have wanted to be him. Especially (bearing in mind) the circumstances surrounding the reason why he was there. He's on his own trip and it's fantastic.'

Tony is the only band member who's absent today. Unbeknown to all but those closest to the band, he was diagnosed some months ago with testicular cancer, and though treatment is going well, with the promise of a complete recovery, his illness has cast something of a shadow over proceedings. He is away today undergoing treatment. 'It's been a blow to making this record, of course,' says Tim, somewhat sombrely, the sparkle absent from his eyes for the first time, 'but I'm hoping it's just a side attraction. The thing is that's he's been having radiotherapy. He's a pretty flamboyant guy, so all the doctors and nurses who've been treating him all know who he is. It's coming out in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, so everyone will know on Saturday. He just wants everyone to know why he's not here.' He breaks off and stands up, looking for somewhere to extinguish his cigarette, 'Can you wait a minute for me to find an ashtray? If you wait for me to find an ashtray you can steal one my my cigarettes.'

He returns moments later, armed with an astray and seemingly having taken a moment to collect his thoughts. 'It's a bit of a weird one,' he continues, resuming his position on the floor. 'You should see the size of it (the lump); it was like a melon and they had to take it out through his abdomen.' Amazingly, three days after surgery to remove the lump, Tony was on a plane over to LA to meet the rest of the band and start the initial recordings for 'Wonderland'. Tim had a surprise in store for him when he landed at LAX. 'I like to surround myself with friends of all occupations,' he explains, 'and I've got a friend in Los Angeles, who I call Doctor Craig, and he does operations. Anyway, he said to me that if he had to have cancer, that's the one he'd choose. Cancer is a big fucking deal, but that one is very treatable. That put my mind at ease, and when Tony touched down in LA, Craig was there to meet him, because I just though that a doctor would be his best friend at that moment in his life.'

Talk of LA brings us onto the other factor, aside from Tony's integration into the fold, which has been a major influence on the band's last two albums, namely Tim's move to Las Angeles. 'Some people love it and some people hate it,' he says of his new home, 'and I'm one of the lovers. I got to the point where I found England, and I'll say England but mainly it's London, was piling on top of me and it got a bit too much. Then I met the woman of my dreams and she's from Atlanta, and we both thought 'let's move to LA, go and live under the Hollywood sign and be stars together'.'

They may not have achieved star status yet, but they're actively working on it. 'No, but I want to be, because there's that much distance, it's... Y'know, you can pull up at a traffic light and look over your shoulder and see Matthew Perry out of Friends in a convertible BMW, and he's just driving about like it's nobody's business. And you know he doesn't live in Hollywood, bu you know he's got some sort of secret palace, and you know nobody's going to bother him.

'I want to be massive in LA because I've always had this thing about wanting to be massive in my own town, and LA's become my home town. I miss it, I crave it, and when we start to touch down at LA airport I look out the window and think 'Fuck, this is my world'.' Talk of LA is enough to cause the smile to return to his face, and he excitedly reels off stories of time spent there with the other band members. 'I look after them now, get them the nest hotels... Well, not the best hotels, but the ones that'll be best suited to their needs, because I know them better than anyone. The last hotel I put them in, they're still talking about it now! 'I made Mark plug in his electric guitar and play in front of the Hollywood sign, and said 'Look, try and better that!''

He leans back, laughing heartily. In many ways the style of 'Wonderland' puts into sharper perspective the relevance of its predecessor, 'Us and Us Only'. With the benefit of hindsight the band's last record can be seen as some form of middle ground to where they are now. 'I don't think that's a bad description,' agrees Tim. 'I think it is a stepping stone, absolutely, and I think 'Up To Our Hips' was a learning experience to 'The Charlatans'. You have to take those breaks sometimes, y'know. I apologise to people that buy them and don't get what they want from them, but you have to think about us as well. We're doing all our stuff in public, so sometimes we fit, sometimes we don't, and sometimes we take a little rest and withdraw to learn about ourselves. It was really natural and that's what some people are freaking out about.'

If there is one immediately identifiable way in which the new sound differs radically from before, it is Tim's vocals. 'It started in here with me and our engineer at this piano,' he says, leaning over to pick out the bassline on an upright piano situated behind him, and getting in wrong in the process. 'Right, I didn't get it quite right then.'

A second attempt follows, before he resorts to singing, in glorious falsetto, the opening line (from 'A Man Needs To Be Told'), this time with a level of success that explains why he is a singer and not a keyboard player! 'We did that in a moment here, and to me it was like a gift, y'know. It was an idea that me and Jim Spencer, the engineer of this record, were sitting in the pub over the road... or should I say wine bar because it sounds more fancy? (He bursts into momentary laughter). Anyway, we were talking and saying why is it that women know so much more shit than we do, and why do we always miss the point altogether? Y'know, a man needs to be told what to do with his fucking life! So we went to do that and I sang in in a falsetto, pretending the women's voice singing to Jim, who was in there (he gestures over to the control room) recording everything that I was doing. That was only a demo, but it opened up a lot of doors to us. And then I tried the falsetto on more or less every song, and some it worked on, and became more natural as time went on, and some it didn't.'

He begins a more or less note-perfect acapella rendition of the opening lines of 'Wake Up', one of the stand out tracks on the album. 'Ace! Ace!' he says, the boyish grin spreading widely across his face once more...

It says in the latest album press release that the band treat every record as if it will be their last. Even for a band with as doom-laden a past as The Charlatans this seems unduly pessimistic, Tim doesn't agree. 'Why does everyone find that really weird?' he says, sounding surprised. 'Just treat every moment like... People are going to buy this record, so why not treat it with the upmost respect that you can give a record and like it's the last thing you're ever going to do?

'It's only mindset, We've had that feeling for a long time. I think the turning point seems to be 'The Charlatans' by the Charlatans, in all ways. We were given a gift at the beginning with 'Some Friendly' and we neglected it because we were young. We didn't know what to do with the second one, and then the third one we re-evaluated and decided to be a proper fucking band. It's like what else can we do? Put me in McDonalds and I wouldn't be able to serve a fucking burger. I can't do anything else. It was my mind thinking 'let;s treat this with respect'.'

He is still treating it with respect, but while there are no immediate thoughts of calling it a day, his perspective on life has been altered slightly by the events of the last couple of years. 'Financially we spend all our money on giving people enjoyment, we don't take anything for ourselves, and that's the truth. We spent all our money on building this place, but this will mean we can be continuous. I don't want to be taken for granted, but we can continue making music for as long as we fucking want.

'Things change, I'm really enjoying being a husband at the moment. It's a masterstroke. It's more important for a personal human being to be married to a partner than it is being in a band. People can forget. Mick Jagger forgot, and look at Jerry Hall, she's a fucking mad woman. A beautiful southern woman, Southern American woman, and he thought that his songs were more important, or more relevant, than his marriage, and that's fucking stupid. And you can quote me on that.' There's probably a message in there for all of us. The very excellent 'Wonderland' is released on September 10th.

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