BLACKPOOL was blessed at the weekend with the return of The Charlatans to the touring scene.

Shambling rather than bursting on to the stage of Winter Gardens Empress Ballroom on Saturday (April 22), they soon had a capacity crowd bouncing to a storming set of old and new favourites and suddenly it was late 1980s Manchester all over again and the Happy Mondays had never turned into the truly awful Black Grape.

Harmonicas and guitars were the order of the evening for the four-piece group rather than the lighting and stage effects often unwisely adopted by so many other bands to compensate for a lacklustre musical performance.

And certainly there was no sign of that as the floor bounced to classic Charlatans numbers such as The Only One I Know and Indian Rope plus new numbers Forever, A House Is Not A Home and Impossible from latest album Us and Us Only.

Guitarist Mark Collins produced an excellent performance with some wicked solo spots and the Cheshire-based band were led by a powerful vocal set from singer Tim Burgess and ably supported by up and coming band Darkstar. Nice line in merchandise too.

Welcome back lads.