She's sitting in the corner looking rather uptight

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

24/03/96 : Lovelife - Lush


I can't claim to be the world's biggest expert on Miki and the others (naming one of them is impressive though, right?) but I really liked "Ladykillers" and the other one (so much so, I can't remember the name of it at the minute) - I've no idea whether they're on this album though.

Well, since the album opens with "Ladykillers" then I guess I'm in luck - and "the other one" is "500 (Shake Baby Shake)" - which I read is written about the Fiat 500 and (finally) the lyrics make some kind of sense to me.  Oh, there's another "other one" as well - "Single Girl" which I'd completely forgotten about.  All in all, there's a nice bit of variety across the album - I really like the guitars (yes, they're nice and jangly) and Miki's voice works well over them.  And it never hurts when Jarvis pops up anywhere, does it?  All in all, very enjoyable - but one we never owned, so we slide down to 12/41.  But - what on earth is going on with the album cover?!?

We're at #8 with a new entry on the start of a seven week run.  Sorry - a SEVEN week run?!?  Mark Knopfler managed 20 weeks and this got seven - there's no justice in the world, I tell you.  The top five this week were The Beatles (a new entry), Celine, Oasis, Mike & his Mechanics and M People - that's quite an old person's top five, isn't it?  There were no other new entries in the top ten, but we had the cool kids favourite straight in at #11 - Pavarotti & Friends.

Wikipedia tells me this is their fourth and final album and they'd abandoned their shoe-gazey roots, so I might have to check their earlier stuff out because I do like a bit of shoegazing.  It also tells me that they knew "Single Girl" was going to be a hit and they weren't entirely sure they wanted a hit.  Indie bands, eh - never happy!  The album was well received critically and commercially over here, but didn't exactly set the world alight - #40 in Sweden, #100 in Australia and #189 in the US.  It also tells me sadly that after this album, there was a badly thought out and received tour of America which lead to talk of the band splitting up and then Chris Acland, the drummer, sadly took his own life (at 30) which resulted in them calling it a day

"Customers also listened to" Belly, Throwing Muses, Elastica and Echobelly - now that's my sort of list.  Female singers and guitar players - count me in!  And I'm happy to include Lush in that category.  I really enjoyed this - both revisiting the singles I knew I liked and checking out the album tracks I wasn't aware of - and am intrigued to listen to the rest of their stuff.  

17/03/96 - Oh.  It's them again.
31/03/96 - An album that defied my expectations

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