The Charlatans UK

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.”
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.