On a Friday evening in early March 1997, driving to my friend Alan’s house at sunset, I put the Charlatans’ Between 10th & 11th into the portable Discman my brother and I had plugged into the tape deck. I’d just bought it from the local Barnes & Noble, where it had been sitting in their clearance bin for $4.99 for who knows how long. I’d started out with the Charlatans on Up to Our Hips a month earlier, but 10th & 11th was a different animal altogether. Dressed in pastel colors, with strangely-titled songs set in lowercase and lyrics that resembled freeform poetry, it was like nothing I’d seen or heard up to that point.
Between 10th & 11th has become one of my all-time favorite albums, and I’m pretty okay with the Charlatans’ career being one long ripoff of the Stone Roses. You can hear “I Am the Resurrection” clearly if you listen to Some Friendly or Up to Our Hips, but 10th & 11th is light on the low end and heavy on keyboards, and favors the Roses’ soft introspection instead of its worldbeating. Surprisingly (or not), it’s probably the least-popular Charlatans album and is rumored to be the band’s least-favorite. I’d follow Robb’s post with almost anything off the album, but “Chewing Gum Weekend” takes its time unspooling, finding a wonderful groove that builds ever so slightly towards its end, making it a perfect track for driving at sunset and for pushing this mix into the early ’90s.
m. joosse
Filed under: Vol 02, Mixtape, NEIMT, The Charlatans
