The Charlatans UK
You Cross My Path
Release Date: Jun 10, 2008
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Cooking Vinyl
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Album Review: You Cross My Path by The Charlatans UK
Fairly Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Why did the Charlatans give away You Cross My Path on the internet? Because they needed a way to announce that they were back, to grab the attention of onetime fans who had long ago stopped paying attention to the group. Not that the Charlatans ever cratered, losing all their listeners, but rather they sank into a pleasant retro groove, emphasizing their fondness for the Stones instead of the modernist dance rhythms that helped bring them into the spotlight early in the '90s. You Cross My Path acts as a corrective as the band revs up the rhythms and takes risks in their production, all without abandoning the classicist structures they've relied upon since their eponymous 1995 record.
Based on rating 2/5
Beaten to the chase by Radiohead’s In Rainbows, unlucky rockers the Charlatans released You Cross My Path (their 10th album, though everyone stopped counting after Tellin’ Stories) as a free download through UK radio station Xfm. The release of this hard and frankly over-?40s-friendly copy arrives hot on its heels. The problems with YCMP include the preposterously coiffed Tim Burgess’s washed-?up, whiney lyrics and the thin nasal drone in which he delivers them (once upon a time a good fit for the UK band’s surly youthfulness, but long since tired).
Opinion: Very Good
Shouldn't there be a Charlatans tribute band by now, possibly dubbed the Snake Oil Salesmen or the Band That Would Not Die That Was Not Oasis? Whoops, not necessary: This 10th studio album from the Norwich, England, Brit-psychers pulls double duty as its own tribute LP, layering the best bits of L. A. -based frontman Tim Burgess' vast back catalog of emotionally disconnected couplets atop the band's trademark soaring keyboards and insistently hummable guitars.