Everyone has been burned before, everybody knows the pain: The Charlatans - Some Friendly Poll

'then'. still a monster.

All these "Sproston Green" stans will now emerge from the thickets.

one of my all time favorite records, music seemed perfect when this came out in 1990.

i think the answer has to be the wonderful "Sproston Green" but it so very hard to not vote for "Polar Bear," "You're Not Very Well" or the excellent "White Shirt." going to listen again before voting.

sproston green so totally overrated imo

oh and the two singles "Then" and "The Only One I Know." are also amazing.

sproston green so totally overrated imo

did you ever see them live. that is when that song came alive,m IMO. it is so massive and they also seemed to close the show with "
Sproston Green" because there was no way possible they were going to top that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wem0M7AZ1wI

this was so much fun. i think i saw them live around ten times and this was always their best song live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juOtvgrdMhQ

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

missed this. would've bumped up TOOIK to a tie.

this thing got 19 votes, just surprised as there wasn't a lot of talk. the single did come out on top as i suspected.

single singles

Sorry, I meant to listen to this before voting because I haven't in nearly twenty years and I can hardly remember any of these songs - but I forgot. Will do so today.

Two strange things about the album: the horrible cover; and that this and Ride's Nowhere were two of the first albums I ever bought, and both had a track called 'Polar Bear' - was this some kind of indie zeitgeist in '91?

Okay. I'd probably have gone for 'Then' - sucker for the descending-bassline thing. The album sounds a bit odd listening to it now, actually - it sounds really thin production-wise, too clean almost as if it wasn't produced at all. That's weird for an album which had all those organ sounds to play with.

I had Up To Our Hips on afterwards 'til my spotify broke and it's much, much better. Not just in terms of sound and arrangement, the writing is better and there are nice bits of strangeness too, like the sudden loss of tempo after the introduction to 'Me And He'. Some Friendly sounds very demoish in comparison.

One thing I do really like about it, though, is that it takes wing in the last three or four tracks - nice to hear an album backloaded, rather than sticking the good stuff upfront then padding it out.

Forgot to vote. I think my favourite song at the time was Sproston Green, but I haven't heard it in nearly 20 years.

I remember seeing them live in 1991 and "Opportunity" sounded soooooooooooo good.