For the longest time my only familiarity with the Petra Roddis-fronted quartet from Cambridgeshire, England was the single "Liar," but oh what an utterly phenomenal tune! The Charlottes stitched the scuzzy distortion of the Jesus and Mary Chain and early Primal Scream together with the immediacy of the Primitives, and increasingly laced their concoction in a woozy dream-pop gauze. They didn't consistently live up to this lofty proposition on their debut mini-ep, the hit or miss Lovehappy, which often resembles shambolic demos, though there are genuine glints of potential on "Keep Me Down" and "See the Danger Shine." Radiation Record's reissue tacks on two Charlottes' follow-up eps from 1990, the aforementioned Liar and Love in the Emptiness, which finds them leaning into the fainter semblances of shoegaze hinted at on Lovehappy, yielding inspired downer indie-rock in the guise of "Blue" and "Could There Ever Be." Their spin on Shocking Blue's "Venus" is faithful to the original yet more stimulating than I had imagined. The hype sticker on the sleeve states all of the material presented has been remastered, but the audio here strikes me as a bit muddy, and quite frankly mono, measured up to the original records they're derived from. Who knows. At any rate, enjoy.
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