Live It Like You Love It (2002)
Long awaited first 'proper' live album from the band, recorded at Manchester Arena on 14 December 2001, this showcases the band at their crowd pleasing best. Lots of older hits and tracks from Wonderland make this an essential purchase for fans. If you've been waiting to hear the boys kick out live, then get with this!
Rating 4/5
Reviews
Pete (thecharlatans.info 2002)
At last we have an officially released live Charlatans gig recording! Fans have been waiting a while for this, but the question is, was it worth the wait? Well the band have, to a large extent, built their reputation on brilliant live performances so this needed to be good. Many had thought in the past that they needed to capture their unadulterated live energy on record - indifferent albums (Between 10th and 11th springs to mind) have sounded fantastic in the live environment, eclipsing the studio canned interpretation of the songs.
Gotta be honest here, the first two tracks are not the best, Love Is The Key and Judas are two of the very best tracks from Wonderland but for some reason they don't reach the stellar heights of their studio recorded counterparts - good but not great, not as shiny as they can be. The fizzy spectacle of Judas is somewhat diluted in this live performance - the falsetto not quite as spellbinding as it has been. The music seems muted when compared to the vocal. Still it ain't bad!
Tim then switches back to his more natural and comfortable vocals with Tellin' Stories and it all begins to make perfect sense again, this followed by the critically acclaimed A Man Needs To Be Told.
What follows next is a 10 song string of great crowd pleasing Charlatans masterpieces including One To Another, The Only One I Know (what a combo!), Weirdo, North Country Boy, You're So Pretty etc etc - all the way to the end we get to hear the Charlies demonstrate their top live form. Every song executed with the ease and assurance of a band who have been exciting and thrilling live audiences for well over a decade.
Forever followed by And If I fall tee up an epic, near 10 minute version of Sproston Green to close a great performance.
If you wanna hear The Charlatans live, this is your ticket. Live it like you love it.
Victoria Segal (NME 2002)
It's tempting to imagine The Charlatans walking into the Manchester Evening News Arena on December 14, 2001 and shouting "This is a fine old place! Let's do the show right here!" After all, if there was any more of the showbiz trouper about them, they'd be wearing tap shoes and starring in a film with Mickey Rooney. Yet one of the greatest mysteries of modern pop music is how they've never outstayed their welcome, never succumbed to the chill waters of the nostalgia revue.
This live album goes some way towards explaining their endearing endurance, a document of a hometown gig from a band who have so many songs to fall back on they never really needed to move forward. As 'Live It Like You Love It' shows, though, they couldn't help themselves and 'Love Is The Key' and 'Judas' (from last year's 'Wonderland') are just as welcome as Manchester tar-pit fossils 'Weirdo' and 'Sproston Green'.
If nothing else, you get proof that Tim Burgess really can sustain that medically improbable falsetto live. Usually, the most that a live album promises is an aural scrapbook for those who were there and a chance to pretend for those who weren't. Post-Finsbury Park especially, there can be no doubt how much goodwill and fondness The Charlatans generate live. They might not spin into mercurial improv or engage in Pink Floyd pyrotechnics but for a lot of people, 'Live It Like You Love It' will fix good memories in one CD-shaped place. It also passes as an efficient compilation: there's the breathless, dizzy pelt of 'Tellin' Stories', the warming whiskey-sour of 'North Country Boy', 'The Only One I Know', a feat of rock'n'roll preservation that could rival Joan Collins - it's this generous-spirited breadth of material that could save 'Live It Like You Love It' from the dusty archive shelves. It's by no means essential, but like The Charlatans themselves, it's good to know it's there.
Jon Horsley (Q 2002)
Rock's perennial survivors capture hits-packed homecoming gig.
This attempt to cement The Charlatans' burgeoning live reputation pivots on last year's seventh and best album, Wonderland. The show, recorded in December 2001 in Manchester, is built around Burgess's new-found vocal confidence, backed up by a funkier sound from a well-drilled band.
But while six of the 14 tracks are from Wonderland, it's the early ones that stand out. Weirdo, played as a groovy thrash and featuring guest Johnny Marr, is energetic fun, a gloriously riffed-up The Only One I Know (sweetly dedicated to "Shaun William Ryder") sounds unexpectedly modern and Impossible is beautifully wistful. It's a shame about the patchy sound quality but this is a decent snapshot of a band at the height of their powers.