You will always swim for shore

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

05/09/99 : The Hush - Texas

I didn't mind that Texas single that started it all off (you know, the one that was so memorable I can't even remember its name) but I don't think I've ever listened to a whole Texas album.  And I've never even heard of this one, so I can't say my expectations are exactly sky high, but let's see.  And I obviously never owned it - 7/17.

Hmmm - it's absolutely fine, but they made the interesting decision to keep Sharleen’s voice pretty low in the mix, which seems like an odd choice given that she's the thing they're best known for.  I actually surprised myself by knowing the opening track, “In Our Lifetime”, but after that it all just slid by pretty uneventfully.  So - absolutely fine, but absolutely nothing more.

We're at #5 in the charts this week on its 17th week of a 53(!) week run, having debuted at #1 - which feels slightly more successful than it necessarily deserved.  The rest of the top five were Shania, Travis, a Divine Comedy best-of (a new entry which I'd probably really enjoy) and a Boyzone best-of (which I definitely wouldn't) and we have one more new entry in the top ten with Feeder (#8 - I listened to this by mistake and actually really enjoyed it, so I'm disappointed I don't get to write it up!).

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - basically, it exists and it did well.  I did however learn a new musical term - "motorik", which is "is the 4/4 beat often used by, and heavily associated with, krautrock bands".  So nothing to do with Texas really, but when did that stop critics showing off?  All the rest of the critics' comments note the music sounds like "<insert random song> done by <insert random artist>", some of which are particularly bizarre - "Siouxsie's "Hong Kong Garden" remixed by Prince".  The album did very well commercially across Europe though (#2 in France, #3 in Belgium), selling over two million copies - all of which is impressive for an album which is, in fact, merely absolutely fine.

"Customers also listened to" George Fenton (no, me neither), Sophie Ellis-Bextor (same haircut), Horse (?) and Nerina Pallot - errr, OK!  I didn't mind this but I was definitely expecting something a bit less bland.

29/08/99 - A nice revisit
12/09/99 - An impressively bad album

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