It's the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

12/11/06 : 9 - Damien Rice

I love O, his debut album but I'm not sure I was even aware this existed.  I'm expecting something similar but containing nothing which means I wouldn't just listen to O again.

And yeah, that's exactly where we are.  He has a nice voice and arranges a nice stripped down backing track, but none of the tracks stood out for me - except for "Me, My Yolk + I" which really didn't work (and not just because of the pretentious title).  I actually quite liked "Sleep Don't Weep" (particularly because it features Lisa Hannigan who has a lovely voice) - except for the (as Wikipedia puts it) "16 minutes of wine glasses and a Tibetan singing bowl" at the end.  You do have to wonder why someone didn't say "errr, Damien - are you sure this is such a great idea?".  I like the doodly album cover though.

Somewhat surprisingly, we're at #4 with a new entry this week at the start of a 15 week run - it charted higher than O (#8) but for slightly fewer weeks (115).  The rest of the top five this week are still the depressing mix of best ofs and classical crossover nonsense - Jamiroquai (new entry), Angelis, Girls Aloud (new entry) and Katherine Jenkins.  We also have three more new entries in the top ten - McFly (a proper album!), Paul Weller and Cliff Richard (I wonder what will be the first year we don't mention Cliff?).  I'm also going to call out #10 this week because, like this and McFly, it's actually a listenable album that's not a best of - Amy Winehouse's Back To Black and I find it hard to believe she died 12 years ago now.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - Damien wasn't massively impressed with the finished article and the critical reception was mixed with NME calling it "IKEA rock" (ouch) but others deeming it to be far better than most of the other stuff in this area.  It did pretty well commercially though - #1 in Ireland (unsurprisingly), #8 in Norway (of course) and a very decent #22 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Glen Hansard (or as you may know him "Outspan" - The Frames are well worth checking out), Bright Eyes, Ryan Adams and Bon Iver.  Yup - they're all very much in the same vein.  And like Damien, they've all made albums for which they're best known and they've made other albums - and for Damien, this album deservedly falls into the "other" category.

5/11/06 - This is certainly something
19/11/06 - A slightly different album from those we've previously seen

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