Charlatans UK’s Folk-Based Songs Produce Rousing Sound

Brit-pop was always bigger than Oasis psychedelia. It is more than Beatles worship. The Charlatans UK have chosen other sources, rougher sounds culled from the likes of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. The Charlatans are traditionalists of another color.

At the Palace on Monday, the British quintet made folk-based pop awash in rich, organ-led melodies and up-tempo guitar work, crafting a sound that was often rousing and deeply melodic. The song “Impossible” was a mix of drama and restraint, a thoughtful ballad that had Mark Collins strumming his electric guitar while singer Tim Burgess blew passionately into a harmonica. It was a sound straight out of “Highway 61 Revisited.”

Not all of the band’s material was up to that standard. While the Charlatans have mastered the sound of their roughhewn idols, the song-craft often fell short, failing to reach the euphoria of the band’s best work. Also not helping was the loss in the live setting of many of the subtle textures found on the new “Us and Us Only” album.

The band sometimes hewed too closely to its source material, stealing a Jimmy Page riff here, a Stones lyric there. But the band has picked its sources well, bringing new life and inspiration to the old ways.

The second-billed Stereophonics’ bright version of Brit-pop is more in line with the Oasis model, but at the Palace it came across with more energy than recent Oasis. It sounded like a good foundation to grow on.