She lives in a house - she’s stupid as a mouse

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

09/05/99 : Head Music - Suede

The second one in a row I owned (15/34) and this was another one I rarely listened to - I believe I quite liked it, but didn't enjoy it as much as either of their first two albums (neither of which we've met yet), so rarely revisited it.  I seem to recall it's a bit more rocky than their earlier stuff, but I could be entirely wrong on that...

Nope - it's not really any rockier overall but it does have its moments.  There's more variety in terms of musical style than on either of their first two albums so maybe that's what I was thinking of - part of me admires their ambition, but I do think the album fails to gel as a result.  It’s mostly all fine but very little of it stands out - I would say "Electricity" and "Head Music" are the highpoints for me, but "The Elephant Man" and "Crack In The Union Jack" must have taken about two minutes to write.  It's a valiant effort, but it doesn't quite work for me, I'm afraid - I do like the album cover though.

We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week, starting a 20 week run.  The rest of the top five were ABBA, Fatboy Slim, Stereophonics and Catatonia (I hope I get to visit that one) and there's one more new entry in the top ten which is The Phantom Menace OST (#8).  Which is a bit weird because it's a new entry next week as well - the difference appears to be that this version doesn't have the LSO on it.  Weird.

Wikipedia has more than I expected on the album (168 milliPeppers) and tells us "the recording of Head Music was plagued with difficulties such as singer Brett Anderson's addiction to crack" - yes, I've heard that can have an adverse effect on productivity.  It sounds like most of them hated each other throughout this period and it doesn't sound like they were overly impressed with the results either - interestingly, Mr Anderson himself is quoted as later saying "I still don't know why the hell we put "Crack in the Union Jack" and "Elephant Man" on there".  The critics were mostly nice enough about it  - they all agreed there were good bits, but some chose to focus on the not so good bits more than others.  It did well commercially in Europe though - getting to #1 in Norway and Sweden as well as here, but it did absolutely nothing in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Rialto (I don't remember them at all), Manic Street Preachers, Mansun and Sleeper - Sleeper win that beauty contest for me.  And whilst I like a lot of Suede's output, this album doesn't win any beauty contests for me - it has a couple of decent tracks and the rest is eminently forgettable (except for the bad tracks, which unfortunately aren't).

02/05/99 - A nice little album, but...
16/05/99 - Nope, I don't get this

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