Austin, Texas, USA - October 6, 1997

The Austin Chronicle
at The Liberty Lunch
by Marc Savlov

There are some shows that catch you off guard with their sheer rock & roll brilliance. You arrive expecting, I dunno, the usual amalgam of distorted guitars and thudding, half-buried drumwork, and you leave with a new lease on your pure-pop-for-wow-people psyche, a revelation shrouded in Chem-Smoke and mixing-board wizardry. This was one of those shows. The Charlatans have been kicking around the Manchester scene since day one, and despite a series of personnel (and personal) tragedies, their percussion-heavy Merseybeat leanings have only become better, tighter, sounder over the past few years (although the Oasis/Blur warfare of late has, occasionally, obscured the fact). Live, with singer Tim Burgess flailing away and inciting the crowd into paroxysms of spontaneous movement and cheers, the Charlatans put Noel, Liam, and Damon to shame. Showmanship, a trait sometimes sadly lacking in the Oasis/Blur camps, seems to be instinctual in Burgess' crew, with guitarist Mark Collins strutting about like Keith Richards, and Martin Blunt's profoundly resonant bass melding with Jon Brookes' huge, thudding, near-tribal drumwork. On top of all that, Robert Collins' inspired keyboards, imbuing new tracks and old with the kind of ivory mayhem usually associated with the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis, almost brought the house down -- or at least some dodgy plaster bits. Look out. As for Portland's Dandy Warhols, their power-pop-meets-shiny-happy-Stooges riffs may not have had the audience pogoing like they should have, but hey, it was a Monday, right? Courtney Taylor's whipcord guitars and smarmy good humor were a wicked counterpoint to the rest of the band ("Somebody said we were an anti-drug band?!" he cracked with a laugh before launching into "Not Even if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth"). Sometimes press kits ("Music that makes you want to fuck") don't lie.