Why don't you take a look at yourself?

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

29/08/99 : Performance And Cocktails - Stereophonics

I own this one (8/18) and used to enjoy listening to it, but can't say I've visited it in many a long year - I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with it.

Yeah - that was a nice trip, although maybe not quite as enjoyable as I was hoping for.  I think the problem for me is that it opens with three very strong tracks "Roll Up And Shine", "The Bartender And The Thief" and "Hurry Up And Wait" but after that settles in to a fine, but not more than that, quality level.  Although I do remember "She Takes Her Clothes Off" as having just enough to distinguish it from the rest.  It was a nice visit though - but it could have been nicer.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on their 25th week of a 68 week run - a fine effort, but unusually for the time, they also came back for another 45 weeks across several runs with it last being seen in '04.  The top five this week were Travis, Boyzone, Shania, Andrea Bocelli (an album that fell just the right side (for it) of "I can't think of any reason to reject this" but then wasn't available anywhere for me to experience/endure) and Texas, with the only new entry in the top ten being Diddy (#9 - or whatever he was called that week).

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album other than noting one journalist's efforts to track down the cover stars (which totally wasn't worth the effort).  The critics at the time were very "it's not as good as their debut" and "they only want to be Oasis", but it's worth pointing out that Oasis had recently released Be Here Now and I think most people know how exactly much they'd like that album to be here now.  It did very well commercially over here, being #5 in the year end list but didn't really do much elsewhere except in Ireland where it got to #3.

"Customers also listened to" Katy Jones, Feeder, Manic Street Preachers and Ocean Colour Scene - I've no idea who Katy is but the others are definitely in the same ball park.  I enjoyed this - not as much as I was expecting to but I'm looking forward to checking out their debut as some point and also seeing if I still find their follow-up, Just Enough Education To Perform, as average as I did the few times I tried to get into it.

21/08/99 - Probably, but not definitely, fine
05/09/99 - Perfectly fine

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