Fox, hare, kestrel skull

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

02/04/21 : Collections From The Whiteout - Ben Howard



I think I'm vaguely aware of Ben Howard and don't think I'm overly impressed with him - but I could be mistaken, so I'm trying to keep an open mind...

...and I don't think it was Ben Howard I was thinking of when I wasn't impressed - but nonetheless I can't say I'm overly convinced by it.  It's singer-songwriter-folk by someone who's been listening to Radiohead or the like and so wants to play around with stuff - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  If I listened to it a few more times, I might get into it, but I'm not 100% sure I would.  I really didn't need 62 minutes of it though - it really started to drag towards the middle..

We're at #1 with a new entry again - he managed an impressive run of one week!  Straight in at #1 and then gone - a small but loyal fanbase or a large fanbase who didn't like it, I guess.  The other new entries in the top 10 were Evanescense (#4) and  Floating Points and friends (#6 - which I liked a lot more than I expected when I met it previously).

Wikipedia basically tells me the album was released and the critics and public generally liked it.  And that's it.  As a sympathy review, I looked at his Wikipedia page and found out he won a couple of Brits back in 2013, so he was obviously a bit of a bigger thing back in the day than I remember him being.

"Customers also listened to" Villagers (which I can totally see the similarity with) and Babe Rainbow, Big Red Machine and Angela Aux (none of whom I can tell you the slightest thing about!).  There's skill on display here, but it didn't quite click with me, I'm afraid.

26/03/21 - The one I've really been waiting for
09/04/21 - Perfectly acceptable pop

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t...
Read more

Time is the fruit of patience

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 27/05/90 : Passion And Warfare : Steve Vai I know that Steve Vai is a highly respected guitarist, but I've got no more clue about him than that.  I also don't have a great history with albums from highly respected guitarists, so I'd have to say my confidence isn't sky high going in to this one (and nothing would have convinced me to buy it - 7/32). Ohmigod, this is rubbish.  The guitar playing is indeed of a very high quality, but man cannot live on guitar playing alone and everything else about it is just pretentious bombast.  "The Audience Is Listening" deserves a specific mention for being particularly rubbish, with a teacher introducing "young Steve Vai" to the class to play a lovely tune and then providing an increasingly histrionic running commentary on how much she doesn't like it.  I can imagine he's very impressive live, but such virtuosity often doesn't translate onto an alb...
Read more