Is our secret safe tonight? And are we out of sight?

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

03/01/10 : The Resistance - Muse

Our FIFTH visit with the lads from Teignmouth - they've snuck more albums in than I was expecting!  I think I've listened to this one, but I have to admit their ridiculousness makes their albums tend to blur into each other so it's quite possible I'm coming to this completely fresh.

No - I had heard it, but not many times.  It's still very Muse-y, but with some interesting diversions into classical/orchestral music in places - it also reminded me of Depeche Mode in more places than I was expecting.  And yes, of course, Queen-like sounds pop up from time to time to say "Hi"!  It's all perfectly listenable, but for me it doesn't have the high points of Black Holes And Revelations, which is probably why I've not visited it many times - I'd say "Uprising" and "Resistance", the opening two tracks were probably my favourites, although the "Exogenesis - Symphony" tracks at the end are an interesting idea.   And I like the album cover as well (even if it does remind me of one of those colour blindness tests).

We're down at #8 in the charts this week (up from #35 last week) on its 16th week of an impressive 60 week run, having peaked at #1 in its debut week.  The top five this week were Paolo, Gaga, Susan Boyle, Bublé and Black Eyed Peas and the highest new entry is Andre Rieu (#22) and the only other one was 3OH!3 (#93 - and I don't remember them at all!)

Wikipedia has more than expected on the album (218 milliPeppers) and I read most of it and struggled to identify anything of particular interest, although this sentence did make me chuckle - "the album was compared favourably to the works of Radiohead and Queen, although some critics found its material overblown and clichéd".  Because, of course, no-one would ever accuse Radiohead or Queen of being overblown or clichéd.  The critics mostly liked it (although I did get the impression some of them just wanted to have a bit of a moan about it) and it did well commercially, particularly in Europe with it getting to #1 in a load of countries there, as well as #3 in the US - selling over 5 million copies globally, which is a fine effort indeed.

"Customers also listened to" Franz Ferdinand (I wasn't expecting that!), Thirty Seconds To Mars, The Killers and Queens Of The Stone Age.  Muse are kinda out there on their own though - and if you like their sort of thing, then there's absolutely no reason you won't like this.

And with that, 2010 is done and dusted!

10/01/10 - In which I say some surprisingly nice things
2010 - Another year over!

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