scaryblog

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 13/05/79 : Dire Straits -  Dire Straits After the disappointment of Communiqué , I feel this has to be an improvement - I've never listened to it but I very nearly bought it many times from the Our Price bargain bucket. Yeah - there's just a bit more life to this than there was to Communiqu é - I'd struggle to say most of it is massively memorable, but you do listen to it thinking "I bet these guys would be great live". And then there's "Sultans Of Swing" which is quite the song - this one is actually only 5:49 long (as opposed to 10:49 on Alchemy) but it still just sprawls with no real structure, but does so gloriously with a brilliant pairing of rhythm and lead guitar, combined with some accessible and catchy lyrics. So it stands out from the rest of the album for me (and familiarity certainly plays a part there) but the rest of it feels like it would be worth a few more listens. We're at #...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 11/07/25 : So Close To What - Tate McRae  This is an album we met in passing as a new entry but my youngest confidently predicted we would get a full visit at some point - and it did look possible for a bit, but seemed less and less likely as time went on. However, somewhat surprisingly, we're getting a proper visit this week (and you're gonna be surprised when you see how long it's taken and how far down the chart we are). Basically, if you're looking for a decent pop album, then you can do far worse than listen to this Tate offering. It's grown on me the more I've heard it - the tracks I'm most familiar with are "Miss possessive", "2 hands" and "No I'm Not In Love" (I've heard the last two a LOT!), but it's all pretty decent. Both daughters saw her live recently and thoroughly enjoyed the show - as my world-weary nineteen year old put it "Dad, she...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 20/05/79 : Spirits Having Flown -  Bee Gees Our third visit with the Bee Gees, they've got to be surfing the post SNF wave here, haven't they? Yup, we start up with "Tragedy" (which features an awful lot more repetition than I remembered) and "Too Much Heaven", which were the only ones I recognised but the album doesn't venture too far from disco territory, although it does try some disco ballads at times. I don't love disco but can appreciate it when it's done well, which it certainly is here - but a whole album is just too much I'm afraid. But a whole album of bad disco would have been considerably worse, so I have to give them that. And you've got to love that hair, dontcha - but what's going on with that red blur? We're at #10 in the charts this week on their fifteenth week of an impressive 33 week run, with it having spent its fifth and sixth weeks at #1 - people really w...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #4 :     The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Like the fledgling fellowship at the start of The Lord Of The Rings, the first season of The Rings Of Power — Amazon’s risky, billion-dollar, high-fantasy gamble on taking the marginalia of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium and turning it into the next Game Of Thrones — took some time to find its footing. With its spectacular second season, however, the series experienced its Council of Elrond moment as its individually great parts cohered into a barnstorming whole. From Sauron’s seduction and torture of Celebrimbor, to the grand reveal of Daniel Weyman’s Grand-Elf identity, to the arrival of Rory Kinnear’s Tom Bombadil, the introduction of heavy metal into Middle-earth, and that extraordinary three-episode spanning Siege of Eregion, Rings Of Power raised the bar on every level with its sophomore outing. And as the fall of Númenor looms, Sauron’s influence grows, and Gal...

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 27/05/79 : Black Rose : A Rock Legend -   Thin Lizzy Our third visit with Thin Lizzy and they've been very unimpressive so far, but I believe this is one of their better albums so let's hope they pull out the stops here. Yeah, I didn't mind this at all - it just got a bit more oomph to it, with some very impressive guitar work in places. I can't say any of it was particularly memorable except for the title track which is a bit of a mess and "S&M" for some of the dubious lyrics, but at least it wasn't dull. And do I have anything else to say on it?!? Nope, not really... We're at #11 in the charts this week on their fifth week of an impressive 21 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its second week - not a bad effort at all. The top five this week were  ABBA ,  Ian Dury & The Blockheads  (a new entry), James Last, Bob Dylan (thankfully ignored because it's a live album) and a Leo Saye...

The journey continues... Motherland (2001) This is the last one I actually bought (it's the last "normal" album she made for a bit) and it's the one I listen to most frequently. But not that frequently, so it will nice to catch up with it. 1. This House Is On Fire After the restrained nature of Ophelia , she's off the leash here and she's not happy at all. Given the album was completed two days before 9/11, the lyrics seem extremely prescient " I don't have the gift of the prophecy  telling everybody how it's gonna be - t here's a wild fire catching in the whip of the wind c ould start a conflagration like there has never been" but she was actually referring to the '00 presidential election. It's got a very interesting musical sound to it (Wikipedia describes it as " Middle Eastern violin–reggae beat fusion") - this is a strong opener and I like it. 2. Motherland The title track slows things down nicely with some beautif...