Things get better babe, that's one thing I know

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

19/08/73 : Foreigner - Cat Stevens


We've met Cat once before with the slightly better known Tea For The Tillerman, which I found somewhat disappointing - particularly considering its reputation.  So quite where that leaves my expectations with for album (that I've never even heard of) is unclear.

The first side is "Foreigner Suite" - all 18:19 of it.  Lordy - it's quite a thing.  It's very earnest and sprawling and exactly the sort I'd usually hate, but, for some totally unclear reason, I didn't mind it at all.  I think it's because there's quite a bit of variation throughout - some bits of it are really quite Genesis-y, but there's really all sorts in there.  It's a very clean sound - there's some fine production on there.  The second side is somewhat more conventional and features some decent enough tracks which have a stronger jazz/funk influence than I was expecting, but are also surprisingly orchestral in places.  All in all, it's quite an interesting listen and not at all what I was expecting from the lad - you can tell from his voice that it's definitely him, but the sound is pretty varied.  It's very much of its time but has dated well - there's a chance I'd listen to it again, and there's no higher compliment I can pay the album than that!

We're at #10 in the charts this week on his sixth week of a ten week run - not a bad effort, but not as good as he'd come to expect.  The top five this week were Peters & Lee (#1?  REALLY?), Rod Stewart (a new entry), Bowie, The Carpenters and yet more Bowie.  There's one more new entry in the top ten which is The Osmonds (#7) and that's it for new entries in the entire chart this week.  Dianne Lee is obviously the top woman in the charts this week and congratulations to her for being the first woman we've seen in the top spot this year, but it doesn't take away from the fact that it's a TERRIBLE album.

Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album, which contains very little of note.  Apparently, this is different from his previous albums (which maybe explains why I quite liked it) because he was in a creative rut and decided to self-produce an album based around "black music" (whatever that is).  It got to #3 both here and the US, but didn't have the same commercial longevity as his previous albums - Teaser And The Firecat, which I'd never even heard of, spent 93 weeks in the charts over here!

"Customers also listened to" Yusuf Islam (whoever he is!), Donovan, Graham Nash and The Speedos.  One of those things does not sound like the others!  I liked this - although I've got no real idea why.  Maybe it was just a bit different?

12/08/73 - A sunny afternoon kind of an album
26/08/73 - Seriously - why?

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