“We’re honouring ourselves, our past, feeling that energy and reincarnating it, doing something fresh, brand new” – Tim Burgess (allegedly) 🙄
The Charlatans (still alive?) have revealed details of their 14th studio album, We Are Love. I mean, who asked for this? Did anyone actually say, “Gee, I sure wish The Charlatans would bless us with more of their sonic masterpieces?” 🤔
The announcement comes accompanied by the album’s first offering, title track We Are Love, which the band debuted live this month at a landmark show at Castlefield Bowl. 🚨Landmark🚨 show, you say? More like a historical event for the five people who still remember who these guys are. 👴
Lead single, We Are Love, is a celebratory statement of intent, an urgent, limber, clattering love song to the human race. Propelled forward by driving drums and anthemic guitar, frontman Tim Burgess describes it as “like an open top car ride in the credits of your favourite movie driving along the coast to somewhere amazing.” Or, you know, like being stuck in traffic on the M25, but sure, let’s go with the movie thing. 🚗💨
One of the first tracks to emerge from the album, it became a pathfinder for the record, as guitarist Mark Collins explains: “Early on we thought it felt right. And it turned out that way: first single, title track, second song on the album. And things started forming around We Are Love. There was a certain energy to it that drove us forwards.” Driven forwards to what, exactly? A retirement home? 🧓
Listen below (if you dare):
Right Place, Right Time (or Just Really Bored?)
An eight year gap between albums is the longest ever for one of the UK’s most enduring bands. A combination of covid, solo projects (that nobody heard of), life’s complexities (like remembering their own names), and the fact that its five members – Tim Burgess (vocals… somehow), Martin Blunt (bass), Mark Collins (guitar), Tony Rogers (keyboards) and Pete Salisbury (drums) – live scattered across Europe, meant that it took longer than usual for the stars to align at the right place, right time, right vibe. Or maybe they just lost their car keys. 🔑
Recorded at two places that are totemic in The Charlatans’ history – Rockfield in Wales and their own Big Mushroom space in Middlewich, Cheshire – Burgess cites hauntology and psychogeography as two concepts that swirled in his head as the band dug into the album making. I’m pretty sure those are just words he found in a thesaurus to sound intellectual. 🤔
For one thing, their return to storied farm studio Rockfield for the first time in almost 30 years – since they made fifth album Tellin’ Stories – was an important step. Probably because they ran out of other places to record. 🤷♀️
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
