VIA PRESS RELEASE | Beggars Arkive is happy to announce the reissue of The Charlatans self-titled fourth album. Set for release on October 8th, the pressing is on marbled double yellow vinyl with a gatefold sleeve and it hasn’t been pressed on vinyl in over twenty years. The audio is via transfer to 96khz/24 bit, with vinyl mastering by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road.
This, their fourth album, a self-titled release, came out in 1995. It was their most ambitious and focused album to date, and returned them right back to the number one slot in the charts. The album also spawned three UK top 40 singles, “Crashin’ In,” “Just Lookin,’” and “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” which peaked at no. 12
When the Charlatans started out, there were countless bands “similar” to them, but they immediately catapulted to the forefront of the Madchester scene, standing alongside such icons as The Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays.
The band was/is successful because in addition to being able to ride the groove, they could also write amazing songs. These were the gifts that made them among the greatest British survivors of our time, rolling through tragedy and stylistic changes to amass a terrific body of work—one that was modern enough to play in clubs but classicist enough to stand the test of time, and one that continues to grow to this day. They have notched up thirteen Top 40 studio albums—three of them number ones—alongside twenty two hit singles, four of them Top 10.
As Tim Burgess said to Digital Spy in 2015, “The thing about the Britpop thing that was happening, ‘Jesus Hairdo’ came out in June and we started straight away on our next album, which became The Charlatans… ‘Just When You’re Thinking Things Over’ got put on daytime rotation on Radio 1 and went in at 15, which was brilliant. That set the album up and the album went to number one. It was amazing. We got single of the week in the NME the week that ‘Country House’ by Blur and Oasis’ ‘Roll With It’ came out but we didn’t think about that at all—it was everybody else. We just had our biggest hit since ‘The Only One I Know’.”
The Charlatans is rated 84 in the Melody Maker’s top 100 albums of all-time list from 2000. The UK’s Select magazine had it in their top 30 of the year, and said “a ring of self-titled confidence, marvelous swirls of multi-layered guitar and organ, this is a blur of positive vibes that will send your heart through the ceiling”.
