Photo credit: Cat Stevens
The Charlatans kick off a new era today with the news of their 14th studio album, We Are Love, out 31st October via BMG. The announcement comes accompanied by the album’s first offering, title track ‘We Are Love’, which the Manchester five piece debuted live this month at a landmark hometown show at Castlefield Bowl.
Alongside the album announcement, The Charlatans have also shared plans for a December UK tour, playing headline shows in Leeds, Stoke, Bath, London, Manchester and Glasgow. Tickets go on general sale at 10am BST on Friday 18th July.
One of the best loved UK bands of the last four decades, The Charlatans’ career spans 13 albums, 22 Top 40 singles, three Number One 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 whilst looking forward to a bright future.
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.” One of the first tracks to emerge from the album, it became a pathfinder for the record, as 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.”
NEW SINGLE ‘WE ARE LOVE’ OUT NOW – LISTEN HERE
ALBUM PRE-ORDER HERE
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’ 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 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’ awareness of the stuff that’s made them – the highs and the lows; the desire to honour their own mighty legacy, whilst not being defined by it. A career-long drive to be progressive and innovative.
Tim Burgess explains: “The whole idea of hauntology and psychogeography is represented by us going back to Rockfield, where so much history has happened for The Charlatans. That was important as a way of honouring every member who’s played in the band. So we’re honouring ourselves, our past, feeling that energy and reincarnating it, doing something fresh, brand new.”
This introspection brought home the fact that love is the glue that has held The Charlatans together for so long, and that’s reflected in the 11 tracks that make up this forward-thinking, future-facing album.
We are The Charlatans.
We Are Love.
The Charlatans – We Are Love tracklist
Kingdom of Ours
We Are Love
Many A Day A Heartache
For The Girls
You Can’t Push The River
Deeper and Deeper
Appetite
Salt Water
Out On Our Own
Glad You Grabbed Me
Now Everything
The Charlatans UK Tour Dates:
6 December – Leeds, O2 Academy
7 December – Stoke, Victoria Hall
8 December – Bath, Forum
10 December – London, Roundhouse
11 December – Manchester, Academy
12 December – Glasgow, Barrowland
Connect with The Charlatans
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