This is the last time I'll abandon you
Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day...
20.11.18 : Absolution - Muse (2003)
Overblown? Overwrought? Over the top? Of course, but all the better for it. It's obviously improved by the addition of approximately a million lasers for their live show (the only other person I've seen live who came close to them in terms of laser use is, bizarrely, Bjork) but as long as you can play it loud enough, then you can't go wrong with this. And you'd have to say it's a very strong opening to the album with "Apocalypse Please", "Time Is Running Out", "Sing For Absolution" and "Stockholm Syndrome" (with the last one probably being my favourite track on the album, although "Hysteria" runs it close). It is a bit long, but they keep it under the hour which is where I start to get really annoyed. And it's a cool album cover as well.
The channel gave this 12 horns and a lot of positive comments - this album is right up the channel's street! Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album (124 milliPeppers) but most of it basically says "people liked it". #1 in the UK, but only #107 in the US, but it's still sold over 1m copies over there, so I suspect it was a bit of a slow burner. It also tells us that Storm Thorgerson did the album cover and he's a man who knows a bit about album covers (he did this one, which is quite well known).
"Customers also listened to" Franz Ferdinand, QOTSA, The Black Keys and Thirty Seconds To Mars - but I'd take Muse over any of them (with the possible exception of some of FF's singles). This is a very fine album in my opinion - and that's the one that matters most (to me, anyway!)
20.11.19 : Homework - Daft Punk (1997)
I quite like a spot of Daft Punk (particularly the best bits of Discovery) but I don't think I've ever listened to this album, so was looking forward to checking it out. However, I found a lot of it to be a bit meh - far more repetitive than their stuff I like. "Da Funk" and "Around The World" were OK but at 73 minutes there was far too much filler for my liking on here.
The channel gave this 10 thumbs up, a couple of positive comments and a new joiner. Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album (183 milliPeppers), but having read it, I'm not exactly sure what most of it is on about. There are some classic critics comments in there though - "a few tracks are more daft than deft" and "the problem with disco the first time around was not that it was stupid but that it was not stupid enough". The album did well commercially though and spent over a year in the charts in France.
"Customers also listened to" Justice, Fatboy Slim and Disclosure - all of whom have done some excellent stuff in their time. As have Daft Punk, but I find that their highs struggle to distract you from their less high points over the course of a full album and this is a definite example of that for me.
20.11.20 : Blossoms - Blossoms (2016)
I always think I like Blossoms but then I think "ah, I'm I just being lulled into a false sense of security by their name and actually don't like them" and I get so confused that I find I can't remember if I do or not. So let's listen to this and get it down in writing as to whether I like them or not. And so, for the record, I can confirm that I like them - they reminded me of the better Verve albums.
The channel gave this 4 thumbs up and 3 fires, but no comments. Rude! Wikipedia has less on this than the previous two, but still a surprising amount for a relatively low key album. A relatively low key album that, to my surprise, got to #1 in the UK - although apparently in the week after it got there, it sold less than 8,000 copies which is the lowest weekly sale for a UK #1 album in modern times (allegedly, although I'm not sure I believe thats still true!). It also got to #185 in the Dutch top 100, which is an impressive statistic, I guess.
"Customers also listened to" Hard-Fi (Stars of CCTV being a fine album very much in this vein) and a load of other people I've never heard of. But I was pleased to listen to this and will be making an effort to remember that I quite like Blossoms in future. Or do I? I can never remember.
Yes, I do like Blossoms, but not as much as I like Absolution, so that's the easy winner of the round for me.
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