Trying to get away from the burning in my head

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

19/08/22 : The Alchemist's Euphoria - Kasabian


I wouldn't say I'm the world's biggest Kasabian fan, but I've got some time for the way that they've stuck in there - it's 18 years since their debut album.  They also handled "the situation" with their ex-lead singer pretty well - beating up your fiancée is not cool, kids.  I can't say I was massively looking forward to this (despite the very cool title and cool cover too - I'm getting definite Rhythm and Stealth vibes) but I feel they've done enough over the years to warrant our first visit with the lads, so let's see what we've got here.

Actually, it's really not bad at all - it's pretty derivative rawk, but if you're being derivative based upon some cool stuff, then there's no reason you can't be cool as well.  Did any of it stand out enough for me to actually remember it?  Well no, of course not - but if you like "this sort of thing" then you might well like this.

We're at #1 with a new entry this week - I'm going to stick my neck out (again) and say this won't be hanging around for long.  The rest of the top five are Harry, Beyoncé (hanging in there just to annoy me), Pale Waves (another new entry) and Ed.  There are no more new entries in the top ten, although I'm intrigued as to why Elvis is at #7 (the film, maybe?) - the next highest new entry is The Dualers at #26 (they're a ska/reggae band, apparently).  Whilst we're looking at the chart, I'm going to call out the lamentable state of #11-#20.  The average number of weeks spent in the charts for this set of albums is 431 - and that goes up to 478 if you ignore Calvin who's very much on the way down in only his second week.  I'm all for letting albums stick around for longer, but I'm really not convinced all that many people were listening to Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Bob Marley, Elton John and Oasis last week - something is rotten, I tell you.

Anyways, back to Kasabian and Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album other than noting it's their first since Tom's departure - the critics are undecided on Serge's vocals but, as one of them points out, Tom "was never the most remarkable singer".  It hasn't really set the world alight elsewhere - but it has, unlike many other Western acts, charted in Japan and I have, of course, got absolutely no idea why.

"Customers also listened to" Liam Gallagher, Reverend & The Makers and Miles Kane - all there or thereabouts as far as I'm aware (but I can't claim to be massively familiar with Miles' work).  I didn't mind this at all though - I'm almost tempted to listen to it again and see if any of it sticks.

12/08/22 - Fine?  Probably.
26/08/22 - Not for me

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