I magine if Oasis singer Liam Gallagher suddenly dropped his cod-punk-rock snarl and started singing like a young Michael Jackson. He'd be laughed off the charts and forced to take an early retirement. No matter how good the songs.
Maybe because Charlatans singer Tim Burgess is a not such a mega-celebrity -- and therefore can avoid the spotlight -- he's managed to successfully pull off such a dramatic transformation. On his band's latest album, "Wonderland," Burgess' Mancunian drawl has been ditched for a falsetto that falls somewhere between early Motown and '70s disco.
When I first heard the new stuff, it was difficult holding back the laughs: Burgess is hitting notes so high you'd think he'd sucked the helium from a fleet of zeppelins. But enthusiasm soon leaped ahead of cynicism. This is one of the best collections of tunes The Charlatans have ever released, with no radical overhaul, musically, from their past sound.
The band tours Japan next month, and you can still expect Hammond-driven indie grooves aplenty mixed up with a slide guitar that gives them a folksy edge. But how many of the new songs The Charlatans will attempt is another matter. Apparently a lot of the recent sets have been focused on past material, which is no bad thing as the band has a repertoire sparkling with fan-friendly anthemic grooves.
Either way, after 1999's rather dull "Us and Us Only" album -- when the writing appeared to be on the wall -- The Charlatans have massively returned to form.
They might have rode the Manchester revival on the coat-tails of The Stone Roses and then hitched a lift from Britpop, but now The Charlatans might just have found their own true voice.
