zavvi blog

Now, normally our first listen to an album involves a hastily unwrapped, newly purchased CD, popped into the stereogram at Same Teens towers and then a read of the sleeve notes and a shuffty at the photos. When you’ve got friends like Tim Burgess though, all that goes out of the window and it becomes one of the best nights of the year so far! Our excitement about the release of The Charlatans‘ 11th Studio album, ‘Who We Touch’ had started last December when we were asked to DJ on their tour around Christmas – new tracks were aired and it was some of their best new material in years.

Tim Burgess at the exclusive Charlatans playback of Who We Touch

Photography by Sarah Thompson @ GigJunkie.co.uk

We were updated as to the progress of the album and it was completed in July, with the release date of September 6th (that’s today if you’re reading this today!) and, so, ‘Who We Touch’ was to remain unheard for a month. It was too long for us to wait so we cheekily asked the band if we could get hold of a copy and have the first ever public playback of it.

We were really pleased when they said yes and beside ourselves with excitement when Tim Burgess said he’d bring the album up with him, DJ and see what people thought (if you’re reading this Tim, we were trying to act cool about it, so sorry if we seemed nonchalant!)

The next week was a bizarre succession of events – we asked The Deaf Institute, our favourite venue, if we could use their basement bar for a private little listening party but the story got in The Metro and other newspapers (oops, that press release worked then) and soon we had 250 people wanting to come. We upgraded to two floors in the venue and expanded the night to include a DJ set from Word legend (and official best raconteur ever) Terry Christian.

“I knew Tim from back when The Charlatans were on The Word and we don’t get many chances to catch up, we’re both seriously into collecting records so I jumped at the chance of DJing and catching up with him”

Once everyone had gathered it was down to Tim to press PLAY.

Photography by Sarah Thompson @ GigJunkie.co.uk

The white noise that preceded ‘Love is Ending‘ marked out the punk credentials of the album, further driven home by the album sleeve. The artwork was done by Gee Vaucher who looked after the imagery of arch anarcho punks Crass and before a note had been struck we knew we were getting something special. The first track has a bass line that Joy Division would be happy with and a riff that The Sex Pistols were the last to be able to graft on to a track.

From there ‘My Foolish Pride’ comes along like the opening credits to a film set in St Tropez featuring a northern soul bass line and a sunshiney dose of pure pop. Near enough everything gets covered in the next hour, from the swoony poetry of Oh! to the more familiar hammond organ sounds of Sincerity. Even a hidden track gets a look in featuring the legendary Penny Rimbaud and the applause breaks out as the album comes to an end.

The final part of our line up came in the bequiffed shape of John Robb. Member of seminal band The Membranes, and author of seminal books like Punk Rock and The North Will Rise Again. An encyclopedic knowledge and a fixture on the music scene for 30 years made John the perfect choice to ask Tim the questions with over a hundred people packed into the bar that normally accommodates 70.

Subjects a varied as the musical key that the world turns in  (F sharp if we remember correctly) to Tim’s twenty one years of adventures in the music business were covered – even his past excesses and present avoidance of drink and drugs came in an audience Q and A where nothing was off limits.

After another spell on the decks which relied heavily on some gorgeous northern soul sevens and a few more autographs and Tim was off down Oxford Road with his box of records – hard to think that this was album number eleven and it sounded as fresh as anything they’ve done in the previous twenty one years. Here’s to the next one!

Watch the video for My Foolish Pride here…

The Charlatans – My Foolish Pride

Check out the latest offers on The Charlatans CDs at zavvi.com>

Words by Same Teens

CLICK HERE to read the latest from Same Teens