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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 06/06/71 : Tom Jones Sings She's A Lady - Tom Jones Our seventh visit with Mr Jones and I have a sneaking suspicion it's probably an album of covers, but I can't prove it and I quite like the title track, so he just about gets away with it - and how could I resist that album cover? The title (and opening) track is quite an interesting one because it's got quite a Motown sound to it, but (to my surprise, given how often tracks were passed round back then) it seems like none of the classic Motown bands have done a version - I reckon The Four Tops or The Temptations would have knocked it out of the park. Google AI did it's usual great job by telling me that people often confuse it with "Three Times A Lady" (they sound sooo similar) and also horrified me by telling me that Ali Campbell & Shaggy have done a version - and yes, it's just as bad as you'd expect.  Back to the album, the rest of it ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 13/06/71 : Aqualung - Jethro Tull Our second visit with JT and last time my verdict was "just odd" - which feels like something that will fit in nicely in '71, so let's see... Well, it is quite odd indeed. There's all sorts of stuff in here with rock, prog and folk contributing the main elements but you can never tell which one is going to take the forefront - but whatever's going on, you can tell these guys know their way round their instruments. Yes, there's too much flute on it but that's what you get with Ian Anderson and there's more than enough other stuff to make up for it. And,  for some unclear reason, I quite enjoyed it - I've absolutely no idea why this happened though, except that maybe it was a lot rockier than I was expecting. We're at #19 in the charts this week on their twelfth week of an impressive twenty week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its second week. The top...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 20/06/71 : Songs For Beginners - Graham Nash Having recently had our first visit with Stephen Stills, we get to see what Graham Nash was getting up to at the time - I'm guessing it's not going to be wildly different. Yeah, we're not wildly different - but, on first listen at least, this just has a bit more oomph and variety to it. It felt to be somewhere between John Lennon and Simon & Garfunkel with some pretty decent tracks on it - it 's probably not as musically accomplished as a lot of the albums we're heard this year, but he's put the effort into making decent tracks with interesting lyrics. And who can argue with that as an approach -  it feels that it would be a grower given multiple listens (which hasn't necessarily been the case for a lot of the "better" albums we've heard). All in all, I really quite liked it. We're at #13 in the charts this week on the start of a seven we...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 27/06/71 : Angel Delight - Fairport Convention Our first visit with FC but I'm at least aware of their general sound and I find it admirable rather than enjoyable - they just take the folky warbling a bit too far for my liking. But maybe a full album will cure me of that (spoiler alert - it won't). Yeah, that's still where we are. They're obviously good on their instruments and the singing is impressive with some very decent harmonies - but I just don't enjoy it. It's funny because I suspect someone like Kate Rusby could take any one of these songs and create a version I'd love without really doing all that much to it, but FC is just too warbly-folky for me. Having said that, the closest we've come to this sort of thing so far this year is Lindisfarne and this is a million percent better than that. We're at #8 in the charts this week with a new entry, which is surprisingly high given they only m...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 21/08/26 : Lost Weekend - Phoebe Bridgers  Our second visit with Ms Bridgers and last time I said I liked the general sound, but sometimes found it a bit ethereal - I'll be very surprised if things are any different here. Yeah - that's exactly where we are. It's a well put together offering with a lot of interesting noises on it, but sometimes she just tries a bit too hard to be not quite there. Maybe given a load more listens it would be a grower, but I'm afraid that's just not going to happen - I'm also not entirely sure who's loving this so much (apart from the critics - they're obviously going to go crazy for it). But plenty are loving it because we're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week - our tenth consecutive new entry at the top and six of them have been from women. The rest of the top five is new entry heavy as well with Katseye, The Script and Jungle all being new, with ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 04/07/71 : Love Story Original Soundtrack - Francis Lai This one is close to being rejected but it seems to be mostly original tracks so let's give it a go - I'm expecting a load of wishy-washy instrumentals (so obviously I can't wait) Hmmm - well, they are instrumentals (apart from some odd wailing on one of them) but they're not actually not all that wishy-washy. That doesn't mean they're great but they do have the odd catchy bit in them - you'd recognise the main "Theme From Love Story" motif and I have to admit it's a well put together couple of bars. And Francis obviously realised that, because he used it a LOT throughout the album - it's clearly used in three of the tracks (often repeated multiple times played on different instruments) and there are variations of it in two or three others. A lot of the other tracks use repetition as well, so this album basically makes a lot of not...