What a journey it has been since the band's debut album Some Friendly (1990), and the breakthrough hit, 'The Only One I Know'...Formed a year earlier by Marlin Blunt, the Charlatans were instantly thrust into the limelight. It was a fresh and exciting time with a groundswell of music from the Manchester scene which gripped the UK and the world for years!<br>Their eleventh studio album, and first to have a 'proper' North American release in almost a decade, Who We Touch ranks as the Charlatan's boldest to date, radically broadening their aesthetic. Produced by world-renowned bassist and studio wiz, Youth (McCartney, the Verve, more), Who We Touch is a 'soulful voyage', a journey through moods uplifting and profound, dark and delirious, which ultimately concludes in blissful optimism.<br>The first emphasis track and video from Who We Touch, 'Love Is Ending' is a world class song while the rest of the album speaks of reconciliation ('Oh') with complex time signatures and continues into the ambience of 'You Can Swim' and then into the hidden track 'I Sing The Body Eclectic' featuring vocals by Crass' Penny Rimbauld! So, existentially, culturally, commercially, Who We Touch is a big record for The Charlatans. In places, you may hear echoes, or homages, reflecting music the band collectively hold dear The Stooges, The Byrds, the Madchester sound - but they are still unmistakably themselves, only remodelled, reimagined, re-energized.
Now, after that journey through the past, the onward march continues ...
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