Miniature disasters and minor catastrophes bring me to my knees
Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.
05/03/06 : Eye To The Telescope - KT Tunstall
Like most of the country, I'd never heard of KT until I caught her on Jools Holland, doing this - which, for all I know, may be very easy to do but it looks impressive to the likes of me. She was a last minute stand-in and it's fair to say she took her opportunity well - and I wasn't alone in being impressed because her album then sailed up the charts. And these things happen, but the album doesn't stay there for any length of time unless it's a goodun - and it very much did, because it very much is...
Yup, it was a pleasure to revisit this - she's got a lovely voice and these are well-crafted songs which show a decent amount of variety across the album. If I had to pick favourites I'd go for "Other Side Of The World", "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree" and "Miniature Disasters" - but it was a pleasure to revisit them all (and I should do so more often). Which I can actually do in physical form because it's somewhere up there in the attic room (but it's much easier just to ask Alexa - I can never find any albums when I'm looking for them). Eleven for the year!
We're at #4 in the charts this week on its 59th week of a 74 week run - it spent all but two weeks of '05 in the charts and it managed another 24 weeks in two more runs over the next year. It peaked at #3 in its 35th and 58th weeks - no doubt boosted by a single being released to remind people it existed. The rest of the top five were Corinne Bailey Rae (a new entry), Jack Johnson, Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs - a very 00s mix of sounds. And the next highest new entry was Ne Yo (#14) which I'm quite happy having never experienced.
Wikipedia has less on the album than I was expecting, most of which is basically saying "Wow, this was a surprise" - which it was, but they could have dug into it a bit more. The critical reviews were very "this is a good start" but I guess they had no way of knowing what was going to happen. And happen it very much did, with it selling more than four millions copies globally, getting to #33 in the US and was the seventh best selling album in the UK in '05 (it managed 34th in '06 as well).
"Customers also listened to" Sara Bareilles, Duffy, Vanessa Carlton and, errr, Mark Ronson - I've absolutely no idea what he's doing on that list. I've also just realised that in my "review" above I gave you no clue what the general sound of the album was - so if, for some weird reason, you don't know this album and you like a female singer-songwriter with a tinge of folk/country then check it out and you're in for a treat! I like this album a lot - and there haven't been many albums this year I've been able to say that about.
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