Twenty-nine different attributes - only seven that you like

 Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

15/01/06 : First Impressions Of Earth - The Strokes


The Strokes recorded one of the finest albums known to man - everyone knows that.  Well, apart from me that is, because I thought it was just bang average.  And if there's one thing I do know about The Strokes is that their output very much follows the law of diminishing returns, so you can probably imagine how much I'm looking forward to this.

And boy does it deliver to expectations.  In places, it's quite Franz Ferdinandi-sh, but that's me being unusually generous.  It's all very sixth form indie-ish - you'd make the right noises if it was your mate's son up there on the school stage, but you've only really come along to support the PTA.  And later on you might ask him quietly whether they might not consider getting a better singer.  And that's pretty much all I have to say on it except to note that "On The Other Side" and "Ask Me Anything" are just really very shit tracks indeed.  Far and away the best thing about this album is the cover.

We're at #2 in this week's chart on its second week of a thirteen week run, having debuted at #1 - there must have been quite a few of those listened to just the once (at most).  Moving swiftly on, the rest of the top five were James Blunt, Editors, Hard-fi and Kaiser Chiefs and the highest new entry was Ja Rule all the way down at #50.

Wikipedia has quite a lot on the album, but it's nearly all about the critical comment.  A lot of which is surprisingly positive (NME made it #8 in their 2006 year end poll - and they had ALL YEAR to come to that decision), but it's all pretty random with some quotes being "the gym does more for your wind than for your jump shot" (from our old mate Robert Christgau - what is he on about?), "what exactly it is the Strokes ultimately hope to achieve with their music remains to be seen" and "the Strokes managed to write a flop all by themselves".  Commercially, it did pretty well - it's their only UK #1 album to date (both previous albums got stuck at #2) and it got to #4 in the US, selling about a million copies globally in the process.

"Customers also listened to" Interpol, The Voidz and The Vines - I've never heard of The Voidz, but I'd take anything rather than having to listen to this again.  It's just a terrible, terrible album - easily up there as a candidate for the worst of the year, even one when I've had to endure Rudebox.

08/01/06 - A surprisingly enjoyable, quality album
22/01/06 - Not as great as I was hoping for

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