What don't you wanna not don't wanna do?

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

18/08/23 : The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons - The Hives 

I admire The Hives because they seem like they're having a great time doing what they do - but that doesn't mean I particularly like what they do.  And I have absolutely no reason to expect this album to change my opinion of them.

And it doesn't - there's nothing to hate here (for me, at least - I can't see the lovely Mrs Reed having much truck with it though) but there's not a load to love either.  It certainly can't be accused of taking itself too seriously though and I imagine they would be pretty fun live, but the album just kinda bounced past me in a Kasabain/Rolling Stones kinda way.  And that's all I have to say on the matter really.  I am intrigued by the album title though and the internet has been absolutely no use in explaining it to me, although it may be to do with the departure of their bassist, Dr Matt Destruction - he's been replaced by the The Johan And Only!

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week (which is their highest chart placing this week).  The rest of the top five are Liam Gallagher (another new entry which I though I'd have to listen to, but it's a live album so I can safely ignore his Oasis karaoke), Jungle (another new entry), Travis Scott (this is hanging around much longer than I expected) and Taylor (but not the one you'd expect) and we have two more "new" entries in the top ten - Fredo (#9 - I guessed he was a rapper from his name and am happy to avoid) and, somewhat bizarrely, David Bowie & The Spiders From Mars OST (#10 - and I've got no idea what brought that on and why it counts as a new entry).  

Last week I said that Cian would drop to #25, which I suspected was a bit high but I'd badly underestimated most of the albums so far so I adjusted things appropriately - so obviously he's dropped to #53.  The Hives feel like they're going to drop a similar amount, so let's go for #53 for them as well (and obviously they'll be #25).  And this week's Taylor stats are three in the top ten, five in the top twenty and "only" eight in the entire chart.  Poor lass.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album - it was recorded at Benny Anderson's studio and that's about it.  The critics are mostly nice enough about it - a lot of them say it's not a progression but they're quite happy with that.  And it's done OK commercially in Europe, getting to #1 in (go on, guess) Sweden.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - which is a bit of a surprise in this day and age.  I'm afraid this hasn't made me a fan though - I still admire what and how they're doing rather actively enjoying it.  But I guess they can live without my fandom.

11/08/23 - Better than expected
25/08/23 - Perplexing

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t
Read more

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more