Is it good to want it all?

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

18/09/20 : The Universal Want - Doves


I like a bit of Doves, but it's hard to believe The Last Broadcast was 20 years ago now!  I did have some concerns this would feel a bit "one more go on the treadmill" but was happy enough to take the risk and hope for the best.

And actually, I think it all sounds pretty good - they still use the same jangly guitar and keyboard noises and they still work pretty well giving a timeless feel to it.  But they've also added some interesting other noises and rhythms to it all here - I think they've done a good job actually.  I can't say any one track jumped out at me - for either good or bad reasons, which suggests a decent quality bar.  It won't be for everyone but if you like that late 90s/early 00s indie sound then it's certainly worth checking this out - I'm also guessing it would sound great in a sunny festival Sunday afternoon slot.  I like the album cover too - even if I've got no idea what's going on!

We're back at #1 with a new entry this week (phew!) - they managed three weeks before disappearing.  Other new entries in the top ten are Everything Everything (#5) and Marilyn Manson (#7) - both of which I suspect I can do without.

Wikipedia tells me this is their first album in ten years - apparently it was very much not a "one more go on the treadmill" effort, just recording stuff when they were all in the mood for it and they all enjoyed the process a lot more as a result.  The critics approved as well and with a #1 album here, it seems like everyone was happy.  Except for the Belgians, who only got it to #120 in the charts.

"Customers also listened to" Gaz Coombes, Cherry Ghost (which is an album I've not listened to in years) and Guillemots - this week has been brought to you by the letters "G" and "C".  This is a much finer album than I was expecting though - it's nice to uncover some unexpected enjoyment for a change.

11/09/20 - An album showing its age
25/09/20 - Well, I didn't hate it

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more