Between 10th and 11th (1992)
Album no 2 sees the band re-emerge in a dramatically changed musical landscape, baggy is dead and many of the weaker suspects have already folded. The albums opener, I Don't Want To See The Sights proves that they intend to shuffle, dance and smile their way onwards and upwards. An oddly beautiful collection of tracks that grows and grows.
Rating 3/5
Chart position 21
Reviews
Sam King (Q Magazine 1992)
Two years ago, Northwich's Charlatans were darlings-in-waiting of an indie scene desperate for the next Stone Roses or Happy Mondays and their records were a subtle (if obvious) mix of updated mod and the then-omnipresent Funky Drummer rhythm.
Now, 15 months after their debut LP, Some Friendly, reached Number 1, they are a different proposition indeed. A year's intensive touring took its toll, as some succumbed to "lifestyle-related" conditions - bassist Martin Blunt's manic depression and the departure of guitarist Jon Baker. As a result, Between 10th And 11th hovers between the light-headed pop of Some Friendly and the claustrophobic sense of desperation that underpins albums like The Cure's Faith. Singer Tim Burgess's new lyrics have a morbid introspection and negativity that seem ill-suited to his position as pop star in the wings, but which do encapsulate the band's apparent dissatisfaction.
Less a success, more a test of faith.
Andrew Collins (NME March 1992)
"You don't seem like history to me" - I Don't Want To See The Sights'
ROLL UP! Roll up! Get your pound of flesh here! You know you want it. And why not, eh? The Charlatans were just too RIGHT weren't they? How can we, the Grand Jury Of Rock, let them get away with that?
Rewind. It is October 1990, the peak of The Charlatans' hitness. Their debut album, 'Some Friendly', has stormed the charts, Number One in its first week, gold within days, two Top Ten singles to recommend it. They are the bee's knees, a user-friendly Happy Mondays, a sexy Inspiral Carpets, a successful High, they have, in effect, pulled off the triple and they're not even from Manchester!
Four-fifths unfashionable West Midlands, The Charlatans might've been The Stone Roses' idiot half-brothers to the purist, but who beat lan Browns lot to America? Who kept their noses clean? See you in court. Stone Roses!
Ned's Atomic Dustbin might keep Wonder Stuff fans happy in the Big Band's absence, just as The Levellers are clearly the timeshare New Model Army. But in both these cases there is the prospect of reward for your pains. But the Roses' vacancy has become too abstract to just walk into now. The Charlatans are on their own. Love 'em or leave 'em.
And only a true sap would deny that the world has changed since The Charlatans last sat on top of it. 'Baggy', as it was called before the war, is no more. Manchester's second generation World Of Twist, the New FADs, Paris Angels, Mock Turtles, Intastella - lie pale and twitching in Fame's gutter. Happy Mondays' seat at pop's banqueting table is by no means guaranteed on their return. Only the Inspirals have managed to maintain a sense of dignity, and '91 was no picnic for them.
So! Can The Charlatans '92 pull it off? Or, more importantly, will anyone let them?
Hell, yes. The appallingly titled 'Between 10th And 11th' is The Charlatans' first great album. There is, however, one thing you should know about it now - there are no pop singles on it. No, 'Between 10th And 11th' is an album's album. But a great one. What is the bunch of bananas on its sleeve trying to tell us? Fuck all is my guess, since this is not an album created for our benefit, Having said that, it isn't 'The Beast Inside' either.
'I Don't Want To See The Sights', track one, veers very safely towards the groovy with its hypno-guitar and strategic offbeat, but immediately there is something more urbane, more (gulp) mature about it.' That' Hammond is well back in the mix, too. The austere production work of ubiquitous robo-genius Flood should not be underestimated here-even an average tune like 'Ignition' is lent intrigue and drama. 'Some Friendly', for all its brilliant moments, was held together by straw and gum in comparison.
Tim Burgess always was an old head on young shoulders, so his rather unhappy, world-weary lyrics are no surprise. "This bloody city/I don't want to waste another year. . . Physically l resemble a vulture. . . There is no soldier in me/I want my guts" - he's very much the disillusioned aesthete in a world of philistines - tongue-tied, yes, but bursting with alluring, half-formed ideas against which 'Judge Fudge' (tickle) is a burp in a wind tunnel.
Three tracks in, and 'Page One' offers up our first major treat. Distorted '70s guitar jerks convincingly and all at once, you are on a freeway. This evocative, silky expanse of sound will have you spirited away. Jon Brookes' tasty drums go whap! and Tim's vocal has you thinking of a singing Neil Tennant! 'Tremelo Song' picks up the baton of invention, (over) rising out of a jittering House piano line reminiscent of a trapped nerve. The rhythm track is as funky as a rubber freight train dancing through the middle of your head, the chorus swilling round you like Cream Of Chord soup.
There is aching sadness in the form of 'The End Of Everything', a fidgety Simple Minds soliloquy in 'Subtitle' and a Teardrop Explodes tribute called 'Can't Even Be Bothered'. In other words, there is much to be savoured and kept. Unfortunately, there are no choruses! (That's maturity!) Current hit 'Weirdo' comes closest, aggressive, sophist, remarkably unmannered. Where the follow-up will come from, I have no idea.
Perhaps the most interesting track is the last '(No One) Not Even The Rain'. Musically, it goes KERRRANGGGG and then the guitars prowl and circle around a child-like organ riff like predators. Fine. Lyrically, though, it borrows its title and theme from the EE Cummings poem "somewhere I have never travelled". . .(The Penguin Book Of Love Poetry, £4.95). Again, this is a noteworthy reference suggesting that Tim Burgess isn't quite the swaying, goofy Northern boychild that history and The Charlatans' old music have painted him. Elsewhere, Burgess' jumbled streams of consciousness ("I stand up to are not in you,") owe a similar debt to the great man Cummings. This is all a far cry from looking for the orange ones. It may have started with an 'E' ? thankfully, it's coming of age with an 'EE'.
So then, how are we to extract our pound of The Charlatan's rosy flesh'? By saying that 'Between 10th And 11th' is Flood's album? Piss off; a producer is paid to bring the best out in a band. Do we damn them for great noises, no singalongs? We do not in the light of last year's heads-down post-Baggy ha'porths, it would be improper really.
At least The Charlatans aren't charging us money for old indian rope. And they're now one album ahead of their spiritual benefactors. Same EE Cummings poem, different line: "The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses " Sheer poetry, man. (8)
Steve Sutherland (Melody Maker 7 March 1992)
YOU know how somebody says something, somebody else writes it down, a few people copy it and suddenly it's fact? I hate that. Like, just recently, U2 have been tentatively rehabilitated because some lazy hack decided that, okay, so "Achtung Baby" sucked a big one but hey, hadn't the band been brave and artistically credible to ditch the epic formula that guaranteed them enough dosh to feed starving Russia and put in a new pool besides? Bollocks. What U2 actually did was listen to MBV and, in their desperation, decide that if they whacked on enough feedback and sounded fashionable enough, nobody would notice that they didn't have a single song fit to lick the thong of "Pride".
Once again we were duped by artifice masquerading as art. Once again the question mysteriously grew rhetorical. And if we're not too damned careful, it could be just about to happen again. It's surely no coincidence that The Charlatans (Oh, how I bet they wish they'd never chosen that name now) have hired Flood to produce "Between 10th And 11th". Flood was one of several million producers roped in to help U2 perpetrate their monstrous con and boy, the man's a genius. "Between 10th And 11th" sounds so f***ing handsome my ears are still begging to shag it. The guitar that kicks in "Ignition" writhes like a serpent, the vaudeville piano that kinda mutates into "Tremelo Song" stutters like film whirling off spools, Subtitle throbs like a didgeridoo and the way "Weirdo" suddenly spews up that Hammond break is easily the most surreal pop moment since that exhilaratingly pointless rap in the middle of "10 Little Girls" Yes folks, "Between 10th And 11th" is such a cornucopia of trickery that sometimes it even sounds as mind blowing as all those impossibly lavish reviews of "Screamadelica" led you to believe the Primals would. Unfortunately though, that's it. Once your swooning senses have recovered from gimmick heaven overload you're left feeling strangely empty and unfulfilled, as if the magnificence was a masquerade all along.
Once you've staggered around the exotic gallery a couple of times you realise that, just like U2, The Charlatans haven't got a song left in them (uh ... did they ever have one?) and all this fancy paintwork is basically prettying up a heap of empty gestures. "The End Of Everything" and "Chewing Gum Weekend" are just great noises grafted onto a vacuum and most of the blame must lie heavily on Tim Burgess' beautifully stooped shoulders. Like Peter Murphy, Situation Two's other gorgeous pop icon, Burgess deals in effect and hopes we'll embrace it as emotion. Now, I'm the first to encourage our stars in their wanton and endless search for the preposterous but it sounds to me as if Burgess may have inherited his ancient lookalike Ian McCulloch's insufferably misplaced arrogance. In assuming he's very candyfloss of idolatry, Mac has blinded himself to the embarrassing reality that his time has passed, and Burgess sounds in serious danger of ending up that way too. Like that other would-be eccentric has-been, Julian Cope, Burgess appears to think that if he acts obtuse enough, we'll think he's a genius.
But listen to "Between 10th And 11th" and then listen to Chris Bell's recently discovered I Am The Cosmos" (I cried) and there's real strangeness for you, there's real torture, real psychedelic. In comparison to the ravaged Bell, Burgess sounds like a fake. "Physically I resemble a vulture - too close to meaning when the world is telling me - don't go" ("Page One")... "I can see a rainbow coming out of your hole" ("Can't Even Be Bothered")…. "A three point conversation indoors with no meaning when the world won't listen, then you make, your own way forward" ("Tremelo Song"). What the
f*** is the boy Burgess on about? Now you know me, I'm not asking for Billy Bragg, I hate didacticism as much as I hate Kevin Keegan, but I do expect something from a lyric, some emotional resonance. And this is just asinine posturing. Verve's Richard Ashcroft singing "l didn't wanna see those brake lights shine" says more than the whole pile of free associative bilge that comprises "Between 10th And 11th. Even Ian Astbury makes me laugh. This does nothing.
There's an attitude problem too. Although it's only Burgess' wheedling vocals and wet inflections on "I Don't Want To See The Sights" that remind us that The Charlatans began their career as New Kids On The Block to Stone Roses' Public Enemy, they seem marooned in a lethargy that they erroneously still consider fashionable. While Burgess is not putting much thought into telling us he "Can't Even Be Bothered" and " There's too much for me to know about" (Weirdo), a whole new generation of bands (Levitation, Adorable ... add your own) have realised things do matter and are bravely, sometimes brilliantly, doing something about it. Suddenly The Charlatans' self-regarding cool somnambulism sounds sorely old-fashioned.
Still, "Between 10th And 11th" does have its moments, well, two actually. "(No One) Not Even The Rain" has a rousing chorus, as if Burgess finally woke up and bothered to write a melody, and "Weirdo" is fun in a chuck-it-all-in-and hope-some-of-it-sticks kinda way. In fact, if you want to know what this album sounds like before shelling out the dosh, just buy "Weirdo" because unlike, say, Ride's "Leave Them All Behind" which barely hinted at the scope of "Going Blank Again", "Weirdo" achieves everything "Between 10th And 11th does. Which isn't very much all really. Oh, and when "Weirdo" fails to get to Number One and "Between 10th And 11th" fails to emulate the commercial success of the frankly wet "Some Friendly", don't let anyone tell you it was because the band took too many risks. The band just f***ed up. Okay?