The Charlatans

BIOGRAPHY

One of the best-loved UK bands of the last four decades, The Charlatans UK's career spans 13 albums, 22 Top 40 UK singles, three Number One UK albums and era-defining anthems like "The Only One I Know," "North Country Boy" and "One to Another" – We Are Love launches a bold new era, one that finds them at peace with their past whilse looking forward to a bright future.

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, life’s complexities and the fact that its five members - Tim Burgess (vocals) 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. They took the time to carefully select a recording A-team of production duo Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange and Lightspeed Champion) and Fred Macpherson (Spector, Rachel Chinouriri, Jessica Winter, Taahliah), plus legendary producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries), alongside a list of engineers, mixers and collaborators that reads like a who’s who of alt rock greatness. The result has been well worth the wait.

Recorded at two places that are totemic in The Charlatans UK's 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. For one thing, their return to storied farm studio Rockfield for the first time in almost 30 years, since they made their fifth album Tellin’ Stories, was an important step. As a band, they hadn’t been there since keyboard player Rob Collins was killed, in the middle of that album’s sessions, in a car crash at the bottom of the track leading to the farm. Throughout the record, you can hear The Charlatans UK's awareness of the stuff that’s made them – the highs and the lows; the desire to honor their own mighty legacy, whilst not being defined by it; a career-long drive to be progressive and innovative.