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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 22/09/17 : Concrete And Gold -  Foo Fighters Our seventh visit with the Foos and, although my last visit was probably my favourite, my expectations are pretty low here - but you never know! Actually, I didn't mind this at all - the tracks are all well crafted (which is generally the case, even for tracks I don't like) and there's enough variety across the album to keep me engaged enough, although I wouldn't claim too much of it stuck in there on first listen. I'll be interested to see whether the proper Foo fans liked it because it wasn't as rocky as I was expecting, but I thought it was all decent enough (if unlikely to get a revisit). We're at #1 with a new entry this week - either our fifth in a row or our eleventh in a row if you include  George Michael  as a "new" entry. It hung around for a somewhat surprising 19 weeks (which suggests word of mouth reviews were positive) and the rest of t...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 29/09/17 : Wonderful Wonderful -  The Killers Our fifth visit with The Killers (and we've got another couple to come because all their albums have hit #1 over here) and I'm sure this will be, as they all are, perfectly fine - but no Hot Fuss. Yeah, I didn't mind this at all. U2 are the obviously touchpoint, but I also got strong hints of Chris de Burgh and, in places, Bee Gees - so make of that what you will. It all takes itself far too seriously but somehow gets away with it - however, there's no danger of me swapping a minute of it for anything on the first half of Hot Fuss. Sorry dudes! We're at #1 with a new entry at the start of an impressive 20 week run with the rest of the top five being Foo Fighters,  Ed Sheeran , Van Morrison (another new entry) and Enter Shikari (another new entry for the St Albans massive). And we have two more new entries in the top ten for Black Country Communion (#7) and The Horror...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 06/10/17 : Now -  Shania Twain Our third visit with Shania - I've no reason to imagine this won't be bearable. but I've also very few reasons to imagine I'll love it.  Hmmm. Well, I didn't hate it - but... ...it doesn't really sound like Shania Twain, which isn't really a problem for me personally - but I can see that some people who bought it because it's a Shania Twain album might have been a bit annoyed. And, at absolutely no point is it absurdly catchy - again, not a huge problem for me, except that I'm left wondering why anyone would care about this. It's just, well, boring - yeah, pretty tuneful and not dreadful, but boring. We're at (quite obviously) #1 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a seven week run which featured a drop in every week. The rest of the top five was a new entry heavy selection of Wolf Alice (another new entry), David Gilmour (ditto),  Ed Sh...

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 13/10/17 :  Wamp 2 Dem -  Giggs Now, I don't want to go in to these things with a closed mind - but sometimes I'm left with no choice because if ever there was an album title that screamed "you're not gonna like this" then this is it. Obviously, I could be wrong - but I ain't gonna be, am I?  Well, I guess it could have been worse because I didn't absolutely hate it  - but I certainly didn't actively like it either. The rapping (and yes, it's rapping, in case you hadn't guessed) isn't dreadful but the backing tracks are very, very simple so I struggle to imagine that there's been too much effort gone into it. Especially because all the effort has gone into making it offensive - the opening track features 18 N words alone, so I just ended up rolling my eyes. Yes, I know it's not aimed at me - but it's REALLY not aimed at me. We're at (quite obviously) #2 in the charts wi...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 20/03/26 : Trying Times - James Blake  I never think I like James Blake, but then I actually hear something by him and I'm like "ah, he's the one that actually does interesting stuff". And, for the first time, I'm actually going to document that - we've never met him before. Yeah, I didn't mind this at all. He's has a low-key but still interesting vibe - at times a less dramatic Sam Smith was brought to mind (his voice is a lot better than I expected), but at other times I thought it was more like a less dramatic Radiohead (there are some interesting sounds on here). And if you can take Sam and Radiohead but remove some of the drama, then that's got to be a good thing, right? I actually don't remember an awful lot of it (although I did recognise Dave, who blends in nicely), but I'd like to listen to it again to get more familiar with it - it feels like it would work well in the sun...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #13 :     F1 It may not reinvent the wheel (sorry), but this nitro-boosted blockbuster is an old-school thrill-ride which successfully ports across much of Top Gun: Maverick’s vibes and style. One wonders if it was originally intended as a Maverick-style sequel to Days Of Thunder (’Days Of Thunder: Trickle?’), to star Tom Cruise. Instead, we get a laconic Brad Pitt as a 200mph underdog, vying against the cream of F1’s drivers — plus his own teammate, an excellent Damon Idris — and deploying all sorts of cunning tricks to out-velocity superior hardware. Bolting cameras onto 16 different parts of a car, Joseph Kosinski again delivers visceral spectacle, making you feel like you’re genuinely inside a modified Dallara F2 2018. But unlike Days Of Thunder, the off-track drama delivers too, with a bunch of likeable characters, and a hissable villain courtesy of Tobias Menzies. Plus, you get Martin Brundle and David Croft comm...