Admittedly Brighton is hardly the time or place to predict what happens next to these Pouting Thomases. This is more like a celebration of days gone by, a flirty weekend trip to a time when flares were flares and people could remember what The Stone Roses actually looked like, "This is a song about…a grasshopper!" beams Tim Burgess, and he should know, because it's blatantly obvious he's as mad as one.
Take away Tim and you're left with four grim geezers kicking up a bit of a noisy stink; put the man at the front and you have a snaky, hip-wriggling, rumpus room-loitering stick of splendid indifference who enables The Charlatans to give Good Show. Which they do with suprisingly vivacious vigor, especially in the light of recent personnel problems and the fact that the vast majority of their Madchester playmates have flushed themselves down the pan with a startling degree of ineptitude.
The plot's pretty simple: throw out a load of baggy classics which (already) send the nostalgia nerves jangling, mix in some stranger spliffmungous stuff from the vastly underrated 'Between 10th and 11th' album and get everyone throwing their arms in the air. So 'The Only One I Know' is a searingly straightforward delight. 'Then' is a darker shade of pop with a thoroughly paranoid underlay and closer 'Sproston Green' takes their entire organ-pumping, bass kicking ethic outside chaotic farewell.
In short, The Charlatans are a weird, warming, immensely likable experience. Don't bury them yet!