She tried to peel me off the pavement

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

20/01/23 : St. Jude - Courteeners


I made a bit of a schoolboy error here - I told she-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken to "play Courteeners latest album" because, like, that would be the one riding high in the charts, right?  Well, no - this is actually their first album.  More on that after I've listened to the thing...

It's an Arctic Monkeys/The Libertines like sound with a pinch of Oasis attitude - yes, it's pretty rough and ready but that's what people liked back then (2008, if you can remember that far back!).  I recognised and liked "Not Nineteen Forever", which is their most successful single so far - the rest of it was fair to middling, I'd say but none of it was hateful.

So, amazingly, we're at #1 with a re-entry this week - it had a 6 week run upon in its initial release in 2008 (peaking at #4), it had one week at #59 in 2018 and now has one week at #1 in 2023 (it might get one more week, but I imagine that will be that).  The rest of the top five are Taylor (of course), SZA (she's still hanging around!), Clavish (a new entry from a UK rapper) and The Weeknd.  And we have one more new entry in the top ten - at #6, it's only bloody Gaz Coombes (ex of Supergrass).

Wikipedia has more on the album than I was expecting and it all tells me absolutely nothing - the album exists.  The critics were pretty sniffy about it ("at least superior to, say, Menswear or Cast", "short lived enjoyment as opposed to repeated longevity", "musically tired, derivative and boring") but the public liked it well enough (the public, eh - what do they know?).  I do have a fascinating definite article fact for you though - when the band recorded this album they were The Courteeners but now they're just Courteeners.  I bet you didn't know that!

"Customers also listened to" Viola Beach, The Pigeon Detectives, The Twang and The Enemy - names of varying degrees of fame, but Courteeners have lasted longer than most and there's obviously still a great deal of affection for them out there.  I didn't enjoy this as much as their last album but it was still a bearable listen.

13/01/23 - A perfectly lovely album, but...
27/01/23 - A very Arcticmonkeysesque sound

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