I could listen to you scream - pretty music to my ears

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

28/05/21 : Intruder - Gary Numan


Someone else I wasn't expecting to see at this point in time and I can't say I was expecting too much from this - he's just been struggling on doing the same old thing for years, hasn't he?

But actually - I really quite liked it.  Yes, it harks back to the 80s big time, but there's certainly more to it than that - I thought he was sounding pretty current and relevant for a 63 year old dude.  It's got a lovely clean sound to it as well - it sounded very nice over my headphones.  Quite Depeche Mode-y I'd say if you like that sort of thing.

We're at #2 in the charts this week - unsurprisingly he didn't hang around for long, managing a couple of weeks before disappearing.  He wasn't the highest new entry - Olivia gets her last mention, but I bet he was chuffed to beat the other new entries of Twenty One Pilots (#3), Pink (#4) and Gruff Rhys (#10).  We also had a bizarre re-entry - My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (#7) on what must be some anniversary, I guess?  Ah - it was re-released for Record Store Day and, bizarrely for such a well known album this was its fourth week in the chart ever (good pop quiz question methinks).

Wikipedia tells me this is his 21st album, so he's certainly been at this thing for years (Tubeway Army first appeared on the scene back in 1978).  It doesn't have a lot more on the album - the two critics mentioned liked it, but who knows what the rest of them thought?  I chuckled to see Persia and Raven Numan getting backing vocal credits - exactly the sort of names I'd expect him to give his kids (the other one is called Echo).  The album didn't exactly set the rest of the world on fire, although it did get to #15 in Germany - it does sound like the sort of thing that would go down well there.

"Customers also listened to" mostly other Gary Numan albums it appears but Blancmange, Killing Joke and Ultravox appear further down - some fine names from way back when!  I was never a massive fan of Gary back in the day but I was very pleasantly surprised by this - I thought it was pretty good and will be making an effort to revisit it.

21/05/21 - A mostly enjoyable mess
04/06/21 - An album I struggled to form an opinion about

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