It's true - we're all a little insane

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

15/10/06 : The Open Door - Evanescence

I don't mind that Evanescence track that everyone knows - without being able to remember exactly what it's called.  "Back To Life"?  Something like that.  I'm expecting this (their second album) to either be exactly the same or to be purposefully different to make a point (and hence considerably worse).

And fortunately it's exactly the same - I'm sure Wikipedia will tell me how they've been on a massive creative journey for their difficult second album but if that's the case then Wikipedia is, in fact, just talking bollocks.  It's perfectly fine, but there's no reason you wouldn't just listen to "Bring Me To Life" (yes, I looked it up this time) on repeat.  And that's all I have to say on the matter really. 

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their second week of a 20 week run (which feels generous), having debuted at #2 last week.  The rest of the top five are The Killers, Scissor Sisters, Razorlight and Snow Patrol - a full house of "proper" albums that we've previously met.  We have just the one new entry in the top ten which comes from Trivium (#7) who I can tell you nothing about - they sound heavy metal-ish and Wikipedia confirms they are and they're still going.

On Evanescence, Wikipedia has a massive amount (408 milliPeppers) but actually doesn't spend to much time telling me how the album is vastly different from their previous one, although it does tell me that it took a long time to put together partly because they wanted to get it right and partly because the guitarist had a stroke and was paralysed - the doctors thought he'd never play again which turned out to be just the motivation he needed to prove them wrong.  The critics liked it well enough (Wikipedia really goes to town in quoting them all) and the public loved it, with it getting to #1 in a load of countries, including the US.

"Customers also listened to" We Are The Fallen, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Disturbed and Stand - all of whom I can tell you absolutely nothing about.  I quite like Evanescence's sound, but there's not enough variety to it to keep me engaged for a whole album - sorry.

08/10/06 - One I know and like
22/10/06 - Much better than I was expecting

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