The Charlatans

Different Days BMG. CD/DL/LP/MC

Cast of thousands (approx) help bring steadfast band’s 13th album into the light.

Paul Weller and Johnny Marr, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris, Sharon Horgan and Ian Rankin: the guest list on Different Days is formidable, if occasionally distracting. Despite the Twitter-feed personnel, The Charlatans’ newest burst of late-phase creativity feels remarkably cohesive. “Trying to get back there again with you,” sings Tim Burgess on Weller collaboration Spinning Out, and Different Days seems to be in pursuit of this state of grace, the songs focused on working out the kinks and creases in various kinds of inner-space. That can involve the cosmic Germanic synths that close Over Again or glint through instrumental The Setting Sun or the more euphorically ravey communions of The Same House and Let’s Go Together. But the muted melancholia of Hey Sunrise, merging the domestic and the psychedelic, best encapsulates the 2017 Charlatans: enduring, reliable, but far from set in their ways.