I gave you my heart, but here we are

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

09/06/23 : But Here We Are - Foo Fighters 

Our fourth visit with them Foos and I've yet to massively click with any of them (and the last one was most peculiar) - I'm expecting this to be a load of well constructed songs that I struggle to care about.

And yeah, that's pretty much where we are - I did like "Nothing At All" with it's banging sing-along chorus, but apart from that it didn't really stick with me.  It's their first album since the death of Taylor Hawkins and you do get the feeling that grief plays a major part in it, but I did't feel it to be overwhelming.  I certainly didn't hate it and it's all well put together - maybe if I gave a few more tries I'd love it, but we'll never know I'm afraid.  If you like the band, I struggle to imagine you're not gonna like this though.  I'd also say it's not great artwork for me to show off against my white background...

We're at #1 with a new entry this week - it'll be interesting to see how long it hangs around.  In fact, I'm going to introduce a new statistic to keep track of that very thing - let's call it "where is last week's album now?", shall we?   And for Sparks,  last week's #7, the answer is "nowhere to be seen", making it their third album in a row to spend one week on the charts - I think it's safe to say they've got a niche following.  The rest of the top five are Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (another new entry and I"m not sad I missed out on it), Lewis, Taylor (one of NINE albums she has in the chart this week) and Harry.

Wikipedia has loads on an album that's only been out for a week - a lot of it covering the aftermath of Taylor's death and the cathartic nature of the album.  Dave did the drumming himself for the first time since 2005, which must have brought quite a few emotions to the surface - he also lost his mother last year so, all in all, 2022 wasn't a great year for the lad.  The critics liked it with Kerrang (those big softies) writing something really nice about it - "somehow Dave Grohl found a way to wrap words around the enormity of his grief as he surrendered to his own impossible circumstances".  And it's done well commercially with it making the top ten in most countries and getting to #8 in the US - but most importantly it kept Noel's incredibly bland dad rock off the top spot here.

"Customers also listened to" Royal Blood, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Hives and The Smashing Pumpkins - let's RAWK, everyone!  Foo Fighters don't quite hit my sweet spot though - there's a lot to admire here, but I struggle to love it (or even really pay attention to it, to be honest).

02/06/23 - Admirable, if not entirely lovable
16/06/23 - A perfectly acceptable "not my sort of thing"

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