It's not about your make-up or how you try to shape up

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

13/08/06 : Inside In/Inside Out - The Kooks

I liked this a lot back in the day - I can't say I've revisited it regularly in the days since so it will be a pleasure to see how it holds up.

Hmmm - it feels harsh to describe it as inconsistent, but the good bits are an awful lot memorable than the other bits.  "Naive", "Ooh La" and "She Moves In Her Own Way" are my favourites and whilst the rest of it bounced along quite nicely, I can't say it came back to me across the years and it does feel like they were running out of ideas by the end of the album.  It's fair to say your man isn't the best singer in the world but it doesn't really seem to matter - I can imagine seeing them at a festival on a sunny Sunday afternoon would feel pretty perfect.  And, it's another one we own somewhere in the house, taking the total for the year to five (which is already more than I was expecting)

We're at #5 in the charts this week on their 29th week of a fine 60 week run - and they managed another 40 weeks over another five runs in '07 and '08 and one more week in '21 (I bet a vinyl re-release was involved).  It peaked at #2 for two weeks, kept off the top by Muse (BH&R - which I'm surprised I've not visited yet), which is an album that takes itself MUCH more seriously.  The rest of the top five this week were James Morrison, Snow Patrol, Razorlight and Orson - that's a very male top five (which isn't something we've suffered from quite as much this year as others).  The highest new entry this week is Chamillionaire (#33) who I'm pleased to say I'd completely forgotten about - apparently he gave up life as a musician to become an entrepreneur.  And the only other new entry in the entire chart is Nick Lachey (#91) who I'd also completely forgotten about - he's best known for marrying Jessica Simpson, who apparently has the most successful celebrity licensing brand ever, which is quite some marketplace to top.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album, but that which it does have is unusually (and unexpectedly) interesting.  The band went into the recording sessions with hundreds of songs from a wide range of genres, which I bet the produced just LOVED.  A lot of the album is written about Katie Melua who dated the lead singer whilst at the BRIT school (admit it, you didn't know that).  And the band were actually really pleased that The Arctic Monkeys debut album overshadowed the whole thing because it took the pressure off.  There's no section on critical reception (they were probably all too busy raving about WYSIATWIN) but it did well enough commercially, getting to #3 in Ireland (which doesn't surprise me) and #4 in Belgium (which does) - but only #165 in the US (it's not a very US kinda sound now, is it?).  The band are still going though - I really ought to listen to some of their other albums at some point.

"Customers also listened to" The Wombats, The Coral, The Zutons and Kaiser Chiefs - none of which surprised me in the slightest!  I was pleased to listen to this again though, even if it felt that it could have done with a bit more polishing away from the high points - but if there were hundreds of songs to start with, then I imagine quite a lot of polishing did in fact happen.  And "She Moves In Her Own Way" is still a cracking track, even after all those years.

06/08/06 - Harmless but pointless
20/08/06 - Some pleasing enough cheeky chappies