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Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

22/01/06 : The Back Room - Editors


I used to like this back in the day and I even saw them live at Glasto one year - but remember very little about them, so make of that what you will.  Let's see if the album jogs any memories - I'd certainly hope it does.

Yeah, it was certainly the sort of thing I used to like but I don't have so much time for these days (see also The Bravery, Interpol, The National).  "Munich" is indeed a fine track - I knew there was an REM cover version which is worth checking out but I wasn't aware of Corinne Bailey Rae's version, which is a pleasantly different version.  Having said all that, I think "All Sparks" is my favourite track on the album - it's quite enjoyably sinister.  Overall, I didn't mind the album but I did feel it could do with a bit more variety - "Camera" tries something a bit different, but the rest of it is all a bit samey.  I do like the album cover - and I suspect that was part of the reason I bought it, taking us to fifteen owned throughout the year.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on their twelfth week of their second run, which was nineteen weeks in all.  It has an odd chart presence, its first four runs were eight, nineteen, seven and twelve weeks over '05-'07 - I assume new singles introduced new fans to the album each time. It even managed another four random weeks in '08 - all very peculiar.  But throughout all the fifty weeks it spent in the charts, we just happen to meet it at its very highest position.  The rest of the top five were Hard-fi, James Blunt, Will Young and Eminem (with an album which is still in the chart this week at #9 on a 322 week run!).  And the January lack of new releases has kicked in big time, with the highest one this week being Fall Out Boy (#65) and the only other one is (quite obviously) a Louis Armstrong best of (#94).

Wikipedia has way more on the album than I was expecting (202 milliPeppers), but a lot of it is backstory or incredible detail about the singles released from the album - I suspect a big time Editors fan has been involved.  The critical reception was generally positive, although there were some comments about the lyrics not being great - I noticed they weren't exactly top grade poetry, but just took it as the way they'd chosen to go.  Commercial reception was only really a thing over here with 500,000 copies sold, although it did make a small impression in Europe and US.

"Customers also listened to" White Lies, Doves, Bloc Party and Starsailor - all bands that have made good tracks, without necessarily going the whole hog to a great album.  And I think we can say the same for Editors - the high spots are pretty high, but they're rarer than I'd like.

15/01/06 - A very bad album indeed
29/01/06 - One that takes me back nicely

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