scaryblog

  A very fortunate visit! When I listened to  Suede's previous album , I enjoyed it so much that I decided to go and see them live - which was a really enjoyable evening , even though I ended up having to wait for about a year for it to actually happen (because of the Brixton Academy crush). So, when I got to listen to their latest album last week (which is well worth checking out), I thought I'd see if I could repeat this trick - imagine my surprise when I saw they were playing that very weekend and there were still a final few tickets left. It was obviously an omen, so what could I do?!? And so, on a wet but surprisingly mild Sunday night (me - out on a Sunday?!?) I headed along to a most unlikely venue for this kind of thing - Royal Festival Hall. I can only remember being there once before and it certainly wasn't to see a load of middle-aged men making an awful racket (as I can imagine the sort of person who is often there might say). My last minute ticket was a standi...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 05/06/88 : Love -  Aztec Camera Completely coincidentally, I was just thinking the other day about how unlikely it was that we'll ever get to meet either of the first two Aztec Camera albums, which I really like - and up pops their third album, which I have, of course, never listened to. So let's give it a go, shall we? Hmmm - it's an "interesting" one. None of it is dreadful, but for the most part it just doesn't have the appeal of the previous albums. High Land Hard Rain is nicely jaunty indie-pop and Knife is more downbeat indie-folk whereas this is, well, neither - all the interesting bits (for me) have just been smoothed over with generic pop/R&B noises. Having said that, I obviously like "Somewhere In My Heart" (because everyone does) and I'd also forgotten how good  "How Men Are" was, but I feel it could have had a more interesting downbeat arrangement. I'm also going...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 12/06/88 : People -  The Hothouse Flowers Our second visit with them lads from Oirland and this is one I owned (taking us to six for the year) - it's not my usual sort of thing, so I guess I bought it because of "Don't Go". I've certainly not listened to it in many a long year, so it will be interesting to see my reaction now. Yeah - it's still not my usual sort of thing, but I liked it. I remembered a surprising number of tracks with "I'm Sorry" and "Love Don't Work This Way" still standing out as favourites (along with "Don't Go" obviously). If you think about it, it comes across as somewhat twee and rambling  Celtic  folk-rock - so don't think about it and just go with the enjoyable flow. I was also surprised to see their name mentioned at work yesterday because they're still going - so fair play to the lads. We're at a surprisingly high #2 with a ne...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 19/06/88 : Whitney -  Whitney Houston Our fifth visit (four albums and one single) with Whitney and I suspect we know what we're going to get - three women in a row though, so well done to the sisters! Yeah, no surprises here - it starts with "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)" (which I'm a fan of) and track four is "Didn't We Almost Have It All" - and the pair of them give you a good idea the general flavour of the album. "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" also stood out for me as particularly high quality and Whitney and her mum Cissy do a pretty good job with "I Know Him So Well". And whilst the other tracks are generally not so well known, the quality level is pretty consistent here - nothing stands out as not belonging. Yes, a whole album of Whitney is a bit much for me but that's more my fault than hers - if you're in the market for this kind of thing then she'...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 12/09/25 :  Antidepressants  - Suede  Our third visit with Suede and last time I enjoyed the album so much that I booked to see them live and had a really enjoyable evening. So I've got high hopes for this... And it again delivers big time for me - it's got some great tunes on it with some particularly fine guitars and Brett wailing angrily (in a good way) over them. I t opens very strongly with t he first few tracks in particular standing out for me but there wasn't a dud track on there and I'm definitely going to make an effort to listen to it again. Particularly since I checked out if they were playing live to promote the album - and they're playing London this weekend and I got (allegedly) one of the last two standing tickets for tonight. Yay! We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter (of course), Oasis (still?!?), Ed Sheeran (huh?) an...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 26/06/88 : Stronger Than Pride -  Sade Our fourth visit with Sade and considering how much I liked Sade's first two albums, it's somewhat peculiar that I don't believe I've ever listened to this one - I guess the three year gap was just enough to make me lose interest but it feels like I should have made the effort at some point in the intervening period. I'm expecting to enjoy it though. Well, I certainly didn't hate it and it's all very pleasant, but I feel "enjoy" would be overstating matters. It just all kinda slid by without leaving an impression - maybe multiple listens would settle them in there, but when you compare this on first listen with the absolute classics you get on their first two albums there's just nothing here. Which is a shame. We're at #10 in the charts this week on their eighth week of a seventeen week run with it having peaked at #3 in its first two weeks. The to...