I’m no great advocate for “BritPop” (whatever that is). It seemed a most boorish, regressive time to me. Oasis made one good album, Pulp had been around so long it was laughable to lump them in with some seemingly new tribe, I remembered Blur when they were trying to jump the Baggy/Madchester bandwagon and don’t get me started on Ocean Duller Scene (no that isn’t a spelling mistake). But to my ears The Charlatans always had one huge advantage over the other BritPoppers, Rob Collins and his Hammond organ.

I can’t remember when I first realised the thrill of a Hammond, maybe when I heard Steve Winwood exploding into the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’ ", maybe when being obsessed with The Jam I was prompted to listen to the Small Faces and Mac McLagan’s wonderful playing on something like “Afterglow Of Your Love” and in more recent times I’ve discovered things like The Quik’s floorshaker “Bert’s Apple Crumble”. I’ve been a fan of a Hammond ever since. When I first heard The Charlatans “The Only One I Know” my ears pricked up and I was interested. I was never a slavish buyer of their records but I always lent an ear.

Now I am aware that having just made the case for why I like The Charlatans that Rob Collins appears on only around half of this album as he tragically died in a car accident while the sessions were going on. He was replaced for the remainder of the recordings by Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy but the band, out of respect for Collins, have never revealed which one of he or Duffy played on what (although Tim Burgess and Mark Collins once suggested during an online listening party that Duffy played on "With No Shoes", "Tellin' Stories", "You're a Big Girl Now" and "Get On It”).

To my ears “Tellin’ Stories” is what contemporary music for Mods should sound like. It’s danceable, song driven very British “rock” music with obvious influences from Soul, R&B and the 60’s. The opening 4 songs (“With No Shoes”, “North Country Boy”, “Tellin’ Stories” and lead single “One To Another”) are utterly marvellous. There’s influences of folk music, dance music, and classic British Rock running through all of them. Later on “How High” is a perfect example of the influence of later 60’s British rock.

“Tellin’ Stories” is a much more guitar oriented album than their previous works, due to the loss of Rob Collins. But the organ shines through in places, particularly on the instrumentals “Area 51” and “Rob’s Theme” (obviously) and “Only Teethin’”. If I have one complaint about the album it’s that Tim Burgess’ voice does get a bit whiny in places, it’s almost like a Liam Gallagher pastiche at times, but it’s a small niggle. If anything worthwhile came out of BritPop (and there wasn’t much) then “Tellin’ Stories” is it.

Tellin’ Stories - https://youtu.be/WfPabs0iQAc

Celtic Social Club’s 2nd (and final) album featuring me aul’ pal Dan Donnelly. Maybe not as instant as it’s predecessor, it feels like they reined in the “celtic”, but there is still good gear to be found here.

Highlights include “This Spell” a hybrid power rock ballad, folk-gospel tune and “City Lights” a careering rocker with plenty o’ trad-fiddle.

“Dancing Or Dying ?” doesn’t have as much overtly trad-folky instrumentation as their previous album, which I kinda miss. 

This Spell - https://youtu.be/2I9aE88A2dY

The Celtic Social Club are a French/Celtic band playing the traditional Celtic musics of Breton, Scotland and Ireland mixed up with Rock, Reggae and Dance music. Originally formed in 2013 the original lineup featured singer Jimme O'Neill, best known as singer with Scottish band The Silencers but, of more interest to me, he had previously been the singer in New Wave band Fingerprintz who had made one of my very favourite singles of 1979, “Dancing With Myself” (not sure what’s going on with the picture here but it’s the right song https://youtu.be/yhR-e5uti0k).

Jimme O'Neill left the Celtic Social Club in 2018 to be replaced by my friend and top Irish singer/songwriter Dan Donnelly who had recently done a shift as guitarist with The Wonder Stuff. The connection with Dan is how I come to have crossed paths with the Celtic Social Club. The first thing I heard by them was via a joint single they did with Ian Prowse and Amsterdam as a tribute to Joe Strummer which had their “Remember Joe Strummer” on one side and Amsterdam’s “Joe’s Kiss” on t’other. “Remember Joe Strummer” turns up on this album in its original form and as one of the live bonus tracks recorded at the Beautiful Days Festival. 

I was expecting this album to kick into full on fiddley-diidley mode right from the off so “Sunshine” comes a quite a surprise, a gentle, grooving pop tune that could easily have come from any of Dan’s solo records. There’s a cool Uileann pipes solo toward the end but that’s it on the traditional front. “Dead End” is more of what I was expecting, a new-wave start with plenty of jigs/reels (I’m never sure of the difference) interjecting, but another that could easily have lived on a Dan Donnelly solo record. 

“Remember Joe Strummer” is a white-boy reggae lilt dedicated to to the great man himself.  One of my highlights on this record is up next “Pauper’s Grave” is an angry rant that (not that I’m an expert) sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place in a set by Flogging Molly or the Dropkick Murphy’s. That’s followed by another belter in “Santiago”, a big booming ballad concerned with finding your inner self on the Camino de Santiago (Pilgrimage of St James), it’s a beauty.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this album on first liston but I remember at the time being really surprised by it. It coulda disappeared into Celtic cliches but it doesn’t, I shoulda known better with Dan involved, well, it gets close on “OK Let’s Go” but one song in a whole album is forgivable. There’s a lot of styles in here and the band meld them fantastically into a whole that absolutely does it for me. If you're a fan of Flogging Molly and the Dropkicks I’d venture this is an album you want to lend an ear to.

Pauper’s Funeral - https://youtu.be/ruQaYRaHNxU