Tim Burgess / Oh No I Love You

Tim Burgess
Oh No I Love You
(O Genesis)
*****
Were Tim Burgess to quit music tomorrow (fingers crossed not, though), there could be no better send-off for the Charlatans frontman than ‘Oh No I Love You’; a nostalgic, sepia-tinted LP, bathing serenely in the warming glow of 70s AM radio gold. It’s a classicist folk-rock maelstrom from a man who clearly knows his record collection inside and out.

Though it boasts an all-star cast of collaborators including members of My Morning Jacket, Lambchop and Clem Snide, ‘Oh No’ is at its most effective when the outside world is eschewed and we’re left with just Burgess and his guitar.

Album centerpiece ‘Tobacco Fields’ is a slice of slow burning, desolate, after hours balladry that recalls The Velvet Underground at their most subdued. Meanwhile, the countrified stomp of ‘The Doors of Then’ with its finger-picked guitars and cooed vocals perfectly evokes the Nashville setting in which Burgess recorded ‘Oh No’.

Throughout what’s arguably the record’s high water mark – the stark yet tender ‘A Case for Vinyl’ – Burgess repeatedly consoles himself, pining “just because I didn’t win”. On the evidence of what’s been seen here, he might just yet.
Alex Cull