Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 13/11/06
Label: Island

It really should be subtitled: "Always the bridesmaids…" Like those other early-'90s bandwagoneers Primal Scream, The Charlatans have proved themselves the ultimate survivors - traversing British music's seasonal changes in the spirit of Andy McNabb while more illustrious and innovative campaigners fall by the wayside. Without piling further disparagement on either band, for The Charlatans it was certainly a case of right lips, right time.

Lumped in with the "Madchester explosion" (even if half the band were from the West Midlands), an amalgamation of the Inspiral Carpets' Hammond organ and Stone Roses' shuffling groove saw them score an early hit with evergreen baggy classic "The Only One I Know". Ever since, they've coupled an uncanny bad luck magnetism (accountant nicking their royalties, the untimely death of keyboard lynch-pin Rob Collins) with an almost Spinal Tap-like ability for mutating into any given year's zeitgeist.

Certainly, having seen off Shaun Ryder and Ian Brown, their career trajectory has seen them steal wholesale from such disparate sources as Mark E Smith, The Fall, Bob Dylan, Oasis and Lambchop. Like Bobby Gillespie's crew, the line between inspiration and outright theft has been always been a somewhat minor detail. Having said that, and this Greatest Hits collection amply proves, The Charlatans have always been a cracking singles band.

Never more so than in the wake of Collins' fatal car crash, which, from the despair of personal tragedy, appeared to elevate them to new musical highs. The urgent celebration of "One To Another", "North Country Boy" and "How High" (all culled from 1997's "Tellin' Stories") showcased a furious pursuit to embrace life and living. Nearly ten years on and they remain a beautiful counterpoint to the drab parochialisms of Britpop. Even better were the more sonically challenging dispatches of "Forever" and "My Beautiful Friend" (also included here) from 1999's "Us & Us Only" that, as the millennium faded, hinted at all manner of new horizons.

Unfortunately, Burgess' next move was to purchase a copy of Lambchop's "Nixon". In the belief he could now sing like Curtis Mayfield, an appropriation of Kurt Wagner's ball-clenching falsetto was several bridges too far. Certainly, it would have been intriguing to watch the faces of his unsuspecting band mates as that caterwauling gasp was unleashed over the majority of 2001's "Wonderland". That album provided one more great song - "Love Is The Key" - but The Charlatans have been treading water ever since.

Comeback singles "Up At The Lake" (2004) and "Blackened Eye Blues" (2006) were less than revelatory, and the only bonus cut here, an electro dance remix of "You're So Pretty, We're So Pretty", carries with it the whiff of embarrassing wedding disco. Still, after 17 years at the coal face, this is a band worthy of respect. A bit long in tooth now and resistant to change they might be, but The Charlatans remain probably the 14th best band in Britain.

    by Adam Webb