Iconic British rock band reckon they’ll ‘save the world’ with new album

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It’s the news 90s rock fans have been waiting for: The Charlatans are releasing a brand new album after nearly a decade away.

The group — now consisting of Tim Burgess, Martin Blunt, Mark Collins, and Tony Rogers — have been a staple of British music since their debut in 1990.

New album, We Are Love, marks their 14th record and frontman Tim is convinced it will ‘somehow save the world’.

‘We thought that from the very beginning, and we think it now,’ Tim, 58, told Metro. ‘It’s gonna somehow seep into everybody’s consciousness.

‘Everybody is going to take it. They won’t understand it, maybe, at first. Who knows whether it’s going to happen immediately or later but, somehow, it’s going to change the world and save the world.’

We’d started our Zoom chat with Tim casually sat on his stairs, as I told him how I’d randomly become obsessed with hit song One To Another in 2016.

Unlike most people who had been fans in 1997 when the song first charted, it found its way to me as the theme song of E4’s sadly forgotten TV show My Mad Fat Diary.

‘That’s amazing how that works out, did it lead you in? That’s great,’ said the singer, revealing that the song holds a firm place in the band’s legacy.

One to Another remains a must on any Charlatans setlist, but on October 31, there will be a slew of new songs vying for fans’ attention for the first time since 2017.

The Charlatans didn’t intend to stay away for so long but life, Covid, and lack of an inspiration ‘download’ got in the way of any meaningful songwriting.

‘There was a moment where we thought, “Are we gonna make a record again?”‘ Tim confessed, ‘We wanted it to be a good one, so the timing had to be right for us.’

He explained the band were simply ‘exhausted’ after their last two album, which were created in the wake of the loss of drummer Jon Brookes, who died in 2013 aged 44.

Tim paused before he brought up his friend’s death, considering his words as we touched on the band’s ongoing ‘history’ and friendship with Oasis.

‘Bonehead, Liam Gallagher, and Andy Bell all turned up and did My Sweet Lord and Live Forever for Jon,’ he said of the tribute night in Brookes’ honour, clearly a touching moment for the singer.

The event saw the likes of The Vaccines and New Order perform, with proceeds donated to The Brain Tumour Charity.

With this loss in mind, it’s fitting that The Charlatans chose to record their new album at Rockfield Studio, which they last used when creating 1997’s beloved Telling Stories.

‘It just felt like everything was clicking into place,’ he shared, revealing how We Are Love is full of nostalgia, ‘hauntology’ and ‘psycho geography’.

‘Big words like that,’ the 90s icon laughed, sharing that the album features a sample of North Country Boy and some old track name-dropping to really bring everything full circle.

Tim explained: ‘[It was] using the past, acknowledging everyone that had been involved in the band in a beautiful way, and bringing them into the present, and hopefully, propelling everyone into the future as well.’

While they may have been ‘facing demons head on’, the familiar setting and excitement at being back together allowed for magic in the recording studio.

‘We felt like Titans making this record, and we were just bigging each other up the whole way through it,’ said Tim. ‘I want the band to shine as brightly as I know that they can.’

There were some fleeting worries that maybe the world — and the bandmembers themselves — had moved on from The Charlatans, with expanding families and Covid changing the landscape of their lives.

Tim confessed things ‘just drifted’, with the group now living far away from each other and only coming together when performing at a gig.

‘I think we got into a room and played together once, and that was in New Zealand,’ he shared, referring to their 30th anniversary tour in 2022.

The songwriting session in New Zealand proved a bumpy start as they were just ‘desperate to write something’ together.

He laughed: ‘[One song] was great, we recorded it… It was bad. Then later we came back again later with a new angle on it, and everyone was blown away.’

That ‘bad’ first attempt developed into the album’s closing track, Now Everything.

Inevitably, Tim shared that some songs did get left abandoned, with one tune about having a bath in the hotel not quite making the cut.

‘It should have been the first single,’ he laughed, adding that track as well as one about a party could be ‘future bangers’.

Their upcoming tour promises to be packed with bangers with old favourites and at least six tracks from the new album making up the setlist.

Tim added that this tour won’t have an opener; instead, fans will get an extra half hour of The Charlatans to ‘squeeze in’ everything they’re hoping to play.

‘We want to play some new stuff and we want to pick some choice cuts from the past, things that are relevant to us,’ he shared.

Reflecting on the band’s 30 years, Tim called it ‘insane’ that their first album went straight to number one, which was a rarity at the time.

‘We were some lads from the street and that just didn’t happen to people like us,’ he said. ‘We were just a bunch of lads from the northwest who really thought we had some great songs.

‘Youth culture was on our side and we continue to this day to write an album — like We Are Love — where we’re actually really thinking that we’re gonna save the world.

‘That was the only thing that we all really believed in, this album’s gonna save the world and there’s no question about it.’

The Charlatans’ new album, We Are Love, is available to pre-order now and is out on October 31. Tour tickets are on sale now.

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