When I hold her in my arms, I feel like Fred Astaire

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

17/10/99 : Millionaires - James

Around this time, for some unclear reason, I just wasn't into James.  I'd like their earlier stuff but they'd fallen out of favour with me - with hindsight, this feels like a mis-step on my part because I enjoyed our recent visit and I have absolutely no reason to think I won't enjoy this.  Either way, we never owned this one - 5/11.

And, yeah - it's a fine album.  Maybe not quite ever making it to "great" but there's some decent tunes on there and enough variety to not feel too samey.  I particularly liked "We're Going To Miss You" which has a definite Depeche Mode-ish feel to it.  And whilst I didn't particularly like the track, I did like the fact that the track they gave a Verve-like sound on was called "Vervacious".

Once again, we're at #2 with a new entry in the chart starting a run of 16 weeks - unsurprisingly it didn't get any higher than this.  The rest of the top five were Shania, Tom Jones, Travis and S Club 7 with one more new entry in the top ten for Pet Shop Boys (#7 - another one I've never listened to).

Once again (again), Wikipedia has way more on the album than I was expecting (181 milliPeppers) but most of it is back story of little interest - although it does make it clear that the album's inception was not a happy one with injuries, firings and in-fighting involved.  It does tell me that it was produced by Brian Eno, which possibly accounts for the greater variety than I was expecting (or maybe the band were just in the mood for it).  It was generally well received by the critics - one called it "an adventure laced with matters transcendental" (which I think is a compliment).  NME and Melody Maker were less kind, but I think the band had moved on from that section of the music press.  And, once again (again!) the album only did anything over here - lots of commonality with The Charlatans seen here.

"Customers also listened to" Inspiral Carpets, Shen Seven, Carter USM and Embrace - some fine Britpop names there.  James swerved most of the Britpop mania and emerged reasonably unscathed - I'm pleased they're still hanging in there and enjoyed this, whilst not absolutely loving it.

10/10/99 - Surprisingly tolerable
24/10/99 - Good, but not their goodest

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