I need something in my life to straighten me out

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

23/04/06 : The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living - The Streets

Our third visit with Mr Skinner, but the only one of those two you need to worry about is his debut.  But we've yet to visit my favourite - his "difficult" second album, A Grand Don't Come For Free, which turned out very well for him and I like a lot.  I don't remember ever listening to this one though, which seems odd because it was only two years later - either the singles were rubbish or it just somehow passed me by.  Either way I'm intrigued as to what it sounds like.

Hmmm - it's a similar sound to AGDCFF, but it doesn't have a "Fit But You Know It" or "Dry Your Eyes" to instantly drag you in, although I do remember the fuss about "When You Wasn't Famous" which is about him (unsuccessfully) trying to a pull a female celebrity who had taken a large amounts of drugs.  Which of course resulted in loads of speculation as to who she was and he had to deny it was either Cheryl or Rachel Stevens.  Going back to the album, it also doesn't have an obvious thread running through it (which AGDCFF does really well, making the whole thing hang together really well).  It seems like it might benefit from a relisten or two, but it also feels like it has a bit of a "oooh, poor me - it's really tricky having to take all these drugs and shag all these groupies" element of self-pity to it, which might get a bit tiresome.  So the jury's still out for me (and will almost definitely stay there) - I'd also say that most people will just hate it.

We're at #5 this week on its second week of an eleven week run, having debuted at #1.  A decent enough run, but not a patch on the 81 or 51 week runs of his first two albums.  The rest of the top five were Shayne Ward (a new entry), The Zutons (another new entry), The Kooks and a Massive Attack best-of.  We've got another couple of new entries in the top ten - Peter Grant (#8), who I don't remember at all but is apparently "easy listening jazz" and The Charlatans (#10), who I like but I've never heard this album.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album but does tell us that it features two of his protegés - The Mitchell Brothers and Ted Mayhem, who win prizes for their names, if nothing else.  The critics were somewhat mixed on it - most of them found things both good and bad to say about it.  It did well enough commercially, but we only went proper mad for it over here.

"Customers also listened to" Jamie T, Plan B and Goldie Looking Chain - varying levels of taking themselves seriously there.  I didn't mind this, but I want to like it more than I did immediately - there was nothing here to take me away from his first two albums.

16/04/06 - A mystifyingly popular album
30/04/06 - An album not aimed at me