Album Review: The Charlatans, We Are Love

There have been numerous times in the long and storied career of The Charlatans when they could have thrown the towel in, only to follow up with another career renaissance. We Are Love could see them perform that trick all over again.

The trademark swirling keyboards and singalong shuffles are all present and correct, with Tim Burgess’ vocals very much front and centre throughout these 11 cleanly produced songs – ‘Appetite’ is positively lush – putting the emphasis on his lyrics like never before.

Mind you, that’s not always a great idea, as Burgess is unlikely to bother the Ivor Novello judges with couplets like, “If I expect less, I get more / If I ask for more, I get less than I had before”, on ‘Out On Our Own’. Some of the doozies on ‘Deeper And Deeper’, meanwhile, might have been better buried behind a wall of distortion.

Much better are the mid-paced haze of ‘For The Girls’, the immediacy of the title track and the Charlatans-go -gospel of ‘You Can’t Push The River’. The nostalgic ‘Glad You Grabbed Me’ sees Burgess looking back on his wild days (“Do you remember taking acid in Cambridge?”), while the epic sway of album closer, ‘Now Everything’, weighs in at just under seven minutes of gospel-tinged brilliance, which recalls Blur’s magnificent ‘Tender’ – and is worthy of such exalted company.

7/10