The Charlatans kick off a new era today with the news of their 14th studio album, “We Are Love”, out on October 31st, 2025, via BMG.
The announcement comes accompanied by the album’s first offering, title track “We Are Love”, which the Manchester five piece debuted live this month at a landmark hometown show at Castlefield Bowl.
One of the best loved UK bands of the last four decades, The Charlatans’ career spans 13 albums, 22 Top 40 singles, three Number One albums and era-defining anthems like “The Only One I Know”, “North Country Boy” and “One to Another”. “We Are Love” launches a bold new era, one that finds them at peace with their past whilst looking forward to a bright future.
Lead single “We Are Love” is a celebratory statement of intent, an urgent, limber, clattering love song to the human race. Propelled forward by driving drums and anthemic guitar riffs, frontman Tim Burgess describes it as: “like an open top car ride in the credits of your favourite movie driving along the coast to somewhere amazing”. One of the first tracks to emerge from the album, it became a pathfinder for the record, as Collins explains: “Early on we thought it felt right. And it turned out that way: first single, title track, second song on the album. And things started forming around ‘We Are Love’. There was a certain energy to it that drove us forwards”.
An eight year gap between albums is the longest ever for one of the UK’s most enduring bands. A combination of covid, solo projects, life’s complexities and the fact that its five members – Tim Burgess (vocals) Martin Blunt (bass), Mark Collins (guitar), Tony Rogers (keyboards) and Pete Salisbury (drums) – live scattered across Europe, meant that it took longer than usual for the stars to align at the right place, right time, right vibe. They took the time to carefully select a recording A-team of production duo Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange and Lightspeed Champion) and Fred Macpherson (Spector, Rachel Chinouriri, Jessica Winter, Taahliah), plus legendary producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries), alongside a list of engineers, mixers and collaborators that reads like a who’s who of alt rock greatness. The result has been well worth the wait.
Recorded at two places that are totemic in The Charlatans’ history – Rockfield in Wales and their own Big Mushroom space in Middlewich, Cheshire – Burgess cites hauntology and psychogeography as two concepts that swirled in his head as the band dug into the album making. For one thing, their return to storied farm studio Rockfield for the first time in almost 30 years – since they made fifth album “Tellin’ Stories” – was an important step. As a band they hadn’t been there since keyboard player Rob Collins was killed, in the middle of that album’s sessions, in a car crash at the bottom of the track leading to the farm. Throughout the record you can hear The Charlatans’ awareness of the stuff that’s made them – the highs and the lows; the desire to honour their own mighty legacy, whilst not being defined by it. A career-long drive to be progressive and innovative.
Tim Burgess explains: “The whole idea of hauntology and psychogeography is represented by us going back to Rockfield, where so much history has happened for The Charlatans. That was important as a way of honouring every member who’s played in the band. So we’re honouring ourselves, our past, feeling that energy and reincarnating it, doing something fresh, brand new”.
This introspection brought home the fact that love is the glue that has held The Charlatans together for so long, and that’s reflected in the 11 tracks that make up this forward-thinking, future-facing album.
Pre-order & pre-save “We Are Love” here.
Tracklist:
1. Kingdom of Ours
2. We Are Love
3. Many a Day A Heartache
4. For the Girls
5. You Can’t Push the River
6. Deeper and Deeper
7. Appetite
8. Salt Water
9. Out on Our Own
10. Glad You Grabbed Me
11. Now Everything
UK Tour Dates 2025:
Dec 06th Leeds, O2 Academy
Dec 07th Stoke, Victoria Hall
Dec 08th Bath, Forum
Dec 10th London, Roundhouse
Dec 11th Manchester, Academy
Dec 12th Glasgow, Barrowland
