Everyone has been burned before - everybody knows the pain

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

21/10/90 : Some Friendly - The Charlatans 

I like The Charlatans but I actually don't think I've heard this album - which is a shocking omission which I will put right immediately.  And so you can probably guess that we don't own it - 4/11.

Yeah, for me it's pretty good but I can see it won't be for everyone.  It's on the slightly shoegazey/psychedelic side of baggy and it's definitely looking back to the 60s, but affectionately so without being too derivative.  "The Only One I Know", "Opportunity", "Them" and "Croston Green" were my favourites, but that's just down to familiarity because they're all on Melting Pot, their best-of.  The rest of them sound like the sort of thing I'd get into, although "109 Pt2" was a bit odd.  Isn't that album cover very much of its time though?

We're at #4 in the charts this week on its second week of a fourteen week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week.  The rest of the top five were Paul Simon (a new entry), Status Quo, The Three Tenors and The Shadows - there were a lot of old men in the charts in this year, weren't there?  This is very much backed up by the three other new entries in the top ten - ZZ Top (#8 - did you know they formed in 1969?), Morrissey (#9 - he's always been an old man) and Led Zeppelin (#10 - they formed in 1968). 

Wikipedia has way more than you'd expect (311 milliPeppers) on the album, most of which is incredibly detailed and utterly pointless background nonsense about the band forming and signing.  I gave up to be honest - less would definitely have been more in this case.  The critics were a bit mixed on it - they liked the influences more than the actual sound and some of them really didn't like Tim's singing.  Some comparisons with The Stone Roses debut were also unsurprisingly forthcoming.  It did chart in a few other countries but nothing like the success it had here - #27 in Sweden was the next highest placement.

"Customers also listened to" Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and Black Grape - some fine sounds from that era.  But not many have hung around for as long as The Charlatans have - it's six years since their last album (their thirteenth) but they're just about to go out on tour again so they're still hanging in there (albeit with a different lineup because two of the original members have sadly died).  I like them and I was pleased to catch up with this album and am looking forward to meeting others of theirs over the years I've still yet to meet.

14/10/90 - OK, but could have been so much better
28/10/90 - Very, very bad

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