Who We Touch
4/5
For two decades, the tenacious Charlatans have surfed and survived fads like baggy, Britpop and big beat. Throughout an unpredictable career that has included detours into Dylan-inspired folk and falsetto-sung funk, the hard-to-hate Mancs have quietly amassed a collection of singles that stands toe-to-toe with that of their brainier and brasher peers.
The surprise of Who We Touch is not that another couple of fantastic singles, ‘Love Is Ending’ and ‘My Foolish Pride,’ tracks one and two, are immediately tossed into the quintet’s greatest-hits canon, but that the rest of album 11 measures up as well.
‘Love Is Ending’ opens with fireworks to the face, a squall of guitar feedback and furious drumming that settles into a driving psych-punk number with descending power chords, dreamy vocal hooks and an out-of-nowhere bridge that momentarily pulls you into a flower field. It’s thrilling, if a red herring. With sweeping strings, pounding piano and a soul strut, ‘My Foolish Pride’ establishes the record’s true mood – lush, bucolic, steeped in the ’60s and comfortably out of step with the cool kids. Acoustic guitars chime, harmonies go ‘ooo’ and organs warble. Tim Burgess, who still rocks Brian Jones’s bowl cut and sweetly sings with a boyish, nasal tenor through Mick Jagger’s catfish lips, pens lyrics like he’s making hippie picket signs: ‘Make love not war,’ ‘Smash the system.’ Touch leads a warm and fuzzy tour through the entirety of British rock.
