ALBUM REVIEWS
THE CHARLATANS Different Days
BMG
There are two parts to The Charlatans’ 13th album, Different Days — the first with sunny melodies and the other, which samples their roots in Manchester’s baggy dance scene.
Opener Hey Sunrise leads with acoustic guitars and has a melancholy air like The Church’s Under the Milky Way. A melody that practically floats appears on Solutions, with Tim Burgess stretching the syllables.
More songs with a bit of bite like Plastic Machinery would have been welcome as Johnny Marr’s guitar and Verve drummer Pete Salisbury add some kick to the proceedings. New Order’s Stephen Morris also takes care of drums and programming on seven of the 13 tracks.
Not Forgotten kicks off imaginary part 2, which sees the band setting their phasers to nostalgia and performing as if back in 1990 again, sharing a Madchester stage with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.
There Will Be Chances sounds like Stephen Duffy’s Tin Tin and The Same House, where they can all live and “wear matching shoes” reminds of 1991 sensations The Farm. Salisbury appears again on Let’s Go Together.
Paul Weller puts his stamp on Spinning Out, which ends the album with a return to a more organic feel.
The Charlatans have repeated cycles of rises and falls in a nearly 30-year career and the swirling Different Days is a reminder of the good times.
THE STEEL WOODS Straw in the Wind
Woods Music/Thirty Tigers
Fame Studios producer Rick Hall maintains that southern rock was born the day Duane Allman goaded Wilson Pickett into covering the Beatles’ Hey Jude. Allman proceeded to tear down Hall’s Muscle Shoals, Alabama, studio with a series of guitar fills that spawned a half-century of imitators.
Over time, that sound made its way from the Allman Brothers Band to Nashville’s country scene, where its sway remains obvious today.
Into this landscape come The Steel Woods, a Nashville band that bills itself as a hybrid of styles, from Americana to bluegrass to rhythm and blues.
But they make no bones about being “steeped in the ethos of southern rock,” which is obvious from the first steely twang of their debut album, Straw in the Wind.
This is, above all, a southern rock album — and a good one.
The album blends styles but draws its strength from power chords and soaring guitar solos set firmly in the southern rock ethos. Compelling vocals by Wes Bayliss wouldn’t be out of place on an early Marshall Tucker Band album.
Whether on a galloping murder romp called Della Jane’s Heart or the ballad If We Never Go, the Steel Woods demonstrate with gusto that this genre isn’t played out.