There’s always a bit of a fear when a band whose biggest hits were a decade or so ago, comes to town with a gig promoting their 10th album.
Fortunately, The Charlatans showed the reason they’ve been around so long with a good mix of the new and old and managed to do it all with plenty of swagger as well. Front man Tim Burgess might be the wrong side of 40, but he still shows he got the voice and the attitude to keep a crowd hanging on his every posture – and there was plenty of those – as he struck up a suitably laconic relationship with the small but up for it crowd.
Burgess also showed his sometimes snarling, sometimes soulful voice, has also been pretty undimmed by the passing years and time has clearly made the band a super tight outfit driven along by the sweeping organ of Tony Rogers.
While the beer running out and the distance to the venue made it a little bit of a slow burner, once they’d treated the crowd to classics like “North Country Boy” and “The Only One I Know” then there was no looking back, with a positive response to new stuff like “Smash the System.”
But it was the encore that really tore up the place with the epic last song (“Sproston Green”) offering a frenetic slightly psychedelic finale that had the audience jumping along to the Charlatans distinctive swaggering sound.
Setlist
1. Then
2. Weirdo
3. Can’t Get Out of Bed
4. Blackened Blue Eyes
5. Smash the System
6. You’re So Pretty We’re So Pretty
7. One to Another
8. Your Pure Soul
9. Tellin’ Stories
10. My Beautiful Friend
11. Oh Vanity
12. My Foolish Pride
13. Intimacy
14. The Misbegotten
15. The Only One I Know
16. North Country Boy
17. This is the End
Encore
18. Love is Ending
19. Sproston Green
Catch The Charlatans featuring Pete Salisbury from The Verve on Nov 23, 8pm at The Warehouse, Scape, 2 Orchard Link, 6521-6565. $75 from Sistic.
