From CMJ Music Monthly -12/01

It's 2pm on a sunny summer SoCal afternoon, and the Charlatans UK are holding casual court at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, poolside. Amidst the tanning tourists and private cabanas, frontman Burgess and guitarist Mark Collins are typically English and typically rock: pale and sleepy-eyed in t-shirts and long trousers, both chain-smoking, Burgess into a Heineken while Collins sticks with Coke. They're about to hunker down for a British TV interrogation when a couple of interlopers accost Burgess at a tree-shaded corner of the courtyard. The visitor with the oversized gym bag does most of the talking. Soon the trio disappears down a corridor into the heart of the hotel.

Ten minutes later, Burgess re-emerges with the score: one sleek, somewhat garish pair of red, blue and grey trainers ("trainer" being to "sneaker" as "football" is to "soccer"). The not-so-mysterious blokes were from a Puma-sponsored footie squad that counts a couple of famous Joneses -- former Sex Pistol Steve and Premier-League-brawler-turned-movie-bruiser Vinnie -among its number. Hollywood United has totally hooked the Charlies up.

Burgess, having already shed his former footwear, gleefully displays the new pair every chance he gets, with the same un-self-conscious enthusiasm he'd previously devoted to his velvety red hat, a Superfly-meets-train-conductor number, and his wide, half-tinted sunglasses, which look like an old pair of Foster Grants Margeux Hemingway might have worn.

It's easy to make Tim's day. He's a congenial, curious and mellow sort of soul, someone who sucks up small pleasures and returns them a hundredfold through music. In both life and business the Charlatans -- at this point in the story, we'll give a little shout-out to the San Francisco '60s psychedelians and cease using the "UK" -- have had their unfair share of darkened days. But the band's unwavering faith -- in friendship, in taking risks, in nothing less than the redemptive power of rock'n'roll -- always leads to brighter vibes.

Those vibes have never blazed more brilliantly than on Wonderland, the Charlatans' spectacular new album. A day-glo playground of rumbling rhythms, sexed-up vocals, barrelhouse boogie keyboards and endless summer riffs, it's their Screamadelica, their Achtung Baby, their Sign O' the Times, a record that merges rock classicism, electronic experiments and pure pop bubblegum into an astonishing career peak. Seven albums in, the group best known as "Madchester" survivors have staked a fresh claim as the most vibrant band in all the British Isles. But Wonderland also has its sights set firmly on the hearts and groins of listeners around the world.

Songs like "Judas" and "Is It In You" fuse rumpshaking disco glitter and Sticky Fingers soul with savage sound effects, joyous melodies and unexpected bursts of falsetto frenzy and gospel diva back-ups. Breathtaking balladry comes to the fore with the mind/body/spirit R&B devotional of "Love To You" as well as "If I Fall," which has the same haunting, ruminative qualities as "Every Breath You Take." And if you wonder what might have happened if Sly Stone and Skip Spence had made a single, check out "A Man Needs to Be Told."

"It's the record everybody always wanted the Charlatans to make," Burgess says. "It's the record we needed to make. All of our records sound a little different from each other, but this is the first one that's been a huge difference.

Particularly compared to Us and Us Only, 1999's collection of brooding, intentionally chorus-free folk-drone anthems. "I don't think I could have gotten any deeper or emotional than Us and Us Only," Burgess acknowledges. "It's a lyric album. This one is a funk album. It's more about the groove, and melody. It's more to the point, isn't it?"

All you need to know about the record's message is right there in the title of the first single: "Love is the Key." "I'm a hunk of burnin' love," Burgess swaggers on another track. And: "I found love." As well as: "I wanna make love to you." Sheer simplicity of emotion, elevated to epic carnality in song. Burgess was married two years ago, and lives in L.A. with his wife Michelle. They met via Ed Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers and were friends first, seeing each other just once or twice a year, whenever the band's touring itinerary made it so.

"It was getting to the point of, fuck that, let's make out!" Burgess neatly summarises. "Then it was either here or London. I needed a fresh beginning. An adventure. It felt like home from the minute I decided."

Concerns that distance might affect the band proved fruitless. Its members don't live in the same city anyway -- Collins and bassist Martin Blunt remain Mancunians, while drummer Jon Brookes and keyboardist Tony Rogers are in the Midlands.

"Whether it's 60 miles, 600 miles or 6000 miles, it doesn't bother me," Blunt says. "When we do get together, instead of navel-gazing, it gives us a little boost -- a sense of urgency."

That was certainly true of Wonderland. Burgess and Collins began writing songs for it in L.A. last fall. Things happened quickly once they came up with the booming, Motown-meets-Muscle Shoals exultation of "Love Is the Key."

"We were jumping around in Tim's living room going, this is fucking brilliant, this," Collins says. "We demoed it up, played it to the rest of the boys in England and two weeks later we were back here." Danny Saber, a remix veteran who also produced Black Grape's It's Great When You're Straight Yeah, supervised most of the sessions at his house on Wonderland Avenue (coincidentally, Burgess nicked a line from Danny Sugarman's autobiography of that name for a lyric years ago). The rest was done at the band's own Big Mushroom studio.

The Charlatans have always been unabashed about their influences, whether it's Nuggets, The Small Faces, Burgess plundering a single John Lennon song for two different tunes on the fourth record The Charlatans, or fusing Bob Dylan and the Byrds with James Brown beats. On Wonderland, Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Womack and Prince were among the benchmarks.

"We love records, we love listening to records, we've allowed records to change our lives," Burgess enthuses. It's no coincidence he's spent a bit of his spare time in DJ booths, including one night in Sweden opening for the Chems that was a definite inspiration -- though not the sort you might expect.

"This guy came up to me afterwards and said, 'why do you play better records than you make?'" Tim recalls. "Since then, I've been trying to make better records than I play."

***

Flashback. True story.

It's 1995. Definitely Maybe and Second Coming are on the record racks, and The Charlatans is on the way. At the bar of New York's Millennium Hotel, Liam Gallagher says the Stone Roses were his favourite band. "But the Charlatans are better than the Roses now," he casually opines.

Six years later, the Charlatans are also better than Oasis. In the U.K., they've managed to stay huge -- three #1 albums and a jukebox worth of killer singles -- without inspiring complacency in themselves or disinterest from the British public. Somehow, they're always fresh.

"We just don't know any other way of doing things," Mark Collins says "We stick together because we like being together. We're still in search of the perfect record."

"Oasis are in a really difficult situation, because if they put out a record that's not their sound everyone will freak out, but at the same time, people are bored with what they do," Burgess observes. "After our first album, which was pretty big, we changed completely. And everyone freaked out. But because it was early on, it allowed us to do anything we wanted since then.

We're five talented people who aren't limited by anything. It's a beautiful luxury."

The Charlatans have always operated on the cusp between traditional guitar-bass-drums-keyboards and the trappings of the modern age. Wonderland is the band's deepest excursion yet into samples, processing and loops. Blunt provides some insight into how the group perceives itself when a scheduled Virgin Records in-store in L.A. is mistakenly billed as an acoustic show. "They don't ask the Chemical Brothers to do an acoustic set," the bassist snorts. "They don't ask Underworld."

The gig takes place with the full array of equipment ("this is the biggest stage we've had in here since ELP," one of the Megastore's employees says), and it's just as mighty as the club dates that preceded it. Burgess is back in touch with his inner Mick Jagger, shaking and baking and moving and grooving, almost like the falsetto forces him to be funky -- free your larynx and your hips will follow. Collins is an understated guitar hero in the George Harrison vein, Blunt and Brookes are a throbbing beast of controlled abandon and Rogers is a keyboard wizard, augmenting his Hammond hooks with synth-pop fills and ray-of-sunshine piano.

Of course, some of Rogers' parts, as well as the female backing vocals and various rhythmic loops and layers, are purely digital. It's hard to believe there was a time in rock when pre-recorded music was the enemy. Now technology is essential, and practically organic, the modern band a kind of cyborg. Burgess credits New Order and the Sugarcubes for turning his head around on that one. Brookes, who remains a true physical force even as his studio role calls for more Butch Vig loop-triggering than Keith Moon pounding, responds to the antiquated notion that a certain instrument or method can't be rock'n'roll with a brilliant philosophical raison d'être.

"Rock and roll is what you do after you play music," the drummer says. "Rock and roll is a behaviour. Music's just fucking music, know what I mean? Rock and roll is how much you drink and how much you snort and how much you don't sleep."

Did we mention the band was up 'til 10am after its first L.A. show.?

Danny Saber was one reason the Charlies got full-on with technology. Tony Rogers, who only joined the band in 1997, was another. Founding member Robert Collins, architect of the original Hammond-dominated sound, died in a car accident in 1996, just before the completion of Tellin' Stories. That record took on the feel of a bittersweet memorial: part mourner's Kaddish, part celebration of Rob's life.

Rogers' assimilation was almost seamless. He, Brookes and Blunt are the Charlatan's other songwriting nucleus. And when the band is hanging out, a casual observer would never know Rogers hasn't been there since day one. If Us and Us Only represented his baby steps, as he struck a balance between reinterpreting Rob's style and inventing things on his own, Wonderland is where the keyboardist breaks into full stride.

"Massive," is all Burgess says of Rogers' contribution. "Massive. Massive. Massive."

"I'd say it's probably our best LP, so that says a lot for Tony," Jon Brookes suggests. "Rob's passing gave another man a chance to fulfil his dream, and that's a beautiful thing.".

In a bitterly ironic twist of fate, Rogers announced in August that he'd been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Touring will be shoehorned around his treatment. The prognosis is good, as is the patient's attitude. "The whole band is a unit," he told Britain's Daily Telegraph. "Nobody has to deal with anything on their own, come good or bad things. We do seem to be the unluckiest band in the world, but I'd turn that around: we're the luckiest band."

***

All that's left for the Charlatans now is waking up America.

"For a British band, it's one of the most important things you can ever do," Jon Brookes says. "Don't let anybody tell you that they're not interested -- they're liars. All the great British bands do it -- the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who. We're no different."

"America's the home of rock'n'roll," Mark Collins says.

Most British bands are defeated by the amount of time and effort that goes in to taking on the States. But both the Charlatans and their record company seem committed to more than just a lip-service effort this time. Between now and Christmas, the Charlies plan to spend more time touring the U.S. than Europe. They aren't afraid of a little work. "I can think of a lot harder things to do in life, y' know what I mean?," Brookes says. "And I've done 'em before I was in a band, so I've got a pretty good perspective on it."

Burgess has a more personal motivation for taking his music to the colonies. "It means something to me to be at least acknowledged in my own town," he says. "The Charlatans should be a global band. It's only America where we're not well known."

The band's U.S. fan base hovers at around 50,000, a loyal, longstanding group that makes an American Charlatans show different from checking out a relative newcomer like Coldplay or Badly Drawn Boys. The Charlies have no buzz factor and nothing to prove -- in L.A., there was no sign of the usual arms-crossed A&R guys or curious hipsters, only fans. The shows were sponsored by left-of-the-dial tastemaker KCRW instead of alternative kingmaker KROQ. While "Love Is The Key" deserves a shot at Top 40 glory, the Charlatans are also due a little cred -- fans of artists as varied as Oasis, Macy Gray, the North Mississippi All-Stars and Basement Jaxx should all find something to tickle them in Wonderland.

For Americans, the record is similar to the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin. Both the Charlatans and the Lips did early work that was distinctive but one-dimensional. Both bands went on to make a series of excellent records with small-to-medium variations in approach and sound, known mostly to a modest core of fans. Both are best known for a single song, though the Charlies' The Only One I Know" came early while the Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly" came late. Then one day, bam! -- an album that's impossible to ignore.

"It's about time, isn't it?" Burgess says. "Every time we put out a record, for some people, it's the first time they've ever bought a Charlatans record. Then they buy all the records, and we're part of their life. That's ace. It was the same with a lot of people of my generation -- when R.E.M. put out Out of Time people thought they were a brand new band."

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the Charlatans.