“It’s good to be back!” yelled the singer of a legendary Nineties indie rock band from Manchester who’ve been away too long, “This one’s for all the lads in the audience!” No, not that legendary Nineties indie rock band from Manchester, but a homecoming Charlatans are every bit as beloved.
Since their last album, 2017’s Different Days, polymath singer Tim Burgess has become more than an iconic indie frontman, solo artist, author, actor, label boss, festival coffee shop proprietor, breakfast cereal imagineer and yellow-haired human lighthouse. He’s now a bona fide national treasure. His Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties – during which he and celebrity musical guests would tweet along to classic albums as everyone played them along at home – were a communal sonic lifeline through the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 and the last good thing ever to happen on Twitter/X. As the Listening Parties wended their way towards Absolute Radio, Burgess kept himself occupied with wildly imaginative and experimental solo albums – 2022’s Typical Music was anything but – and his original baggy-turned-Britpop-turned-funk-soul band seemed a fading concern.
Yet as Tony Rogers’ Hammond organ powered up to lift off, Martin Blunt’s bassline loped in like a drugged-up dinosaur and “Forever” rumbled in on a groove that was part Hacienda 1989 and part CBGBs 1975, Burgess seemed wholeheartedly back in his element. In leather trousers, black overcoat and striped art pop jumper – and with his hair restored to its classic tousled brown – he resembled more a moody Velvet Underground cohort than a perma-smiling sunbeam, and carried The Charlatans’ copious hits with a cool enthusiasm. Blowing kisses at the trains passing across the bridge overhead, within half an hour he’d tumbled through the slasher baggy “Weirdo”, a hazy, kaleidoscopic “North Country Boy”, a paradoxically up-for-the-dawn “Can’t Get Out of Bed” and a bright-edged “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, a lagers-aloft communion topped with a celebratory howl: “I’m coming home! To Salford!”
The Charlatans have managed to evolve, adapt and drift through scenes and eras thanks to a fundamental sonic amenability. Over the years their loose, melodic retro grooves have been (some) friendly enough to fit comfortably alongside the Stone Roses dance rock, Primal Scream’s southern Stones boogie, Weller-brand Britpop, Beck funk and more. There were moments here where they swerved into darkness – “Toothache” was all swampland heat and screams of psycho organ, while “Blackened Blue Eyes”, peopled by “random prostitutes” and “the gutless who rape”, was compulsive gospel rock with the devil’s claws in its hide. But they’re born people-pleasers, and the setlist was so hit heavy it almost had its own gravity.
“One to Another” rolled in on Beastie Boys beats and rave piano. “Just Lookin’” and “Impossible” revisited the band’s doe-eyed pastoral side. “The Only One I Know” and “How High” closed the main set sounding as elastic and euphoric as they did during the light-trailed end of the Nineties. Even the new songs from an as-yet-unannounced fourteenth album were instant fan favourites, Burgess strapping on an acoustic guitar for folk rocker “Many a Day a Heartache” – lyrically downcast, sonically breezy – and intoning the title of the psych pop “We Are Love” like a new band ethos.
Because they were. As their traditional encore closer “Sproston Green” struck up its enveloping groove, there was so much love in the bowl, from the arm-waving faithful to the commuters dancing along on the trains overhead. And to Burgess himself, microphone clutched to his chest, trademark beam stretched across his chops, back home in innumerable ways. That other legendary Nineties Manchester indie rock band should be taking notes.
