But we both know that that's nothing at all

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

10/07/05 : Up All Night - Razorlight

Another one I owned (the ratio has somehow got up to 33%) and I remember really liking some of the tracks and being less sure about the others, so let's see what we've got now - I have a suspicion it may have dated horribly.

Hmmm - "horribly" feels a bit harsh, but it certainly has dated.  It's also weird because I assumed "Golden Touch" was the best track (it's OK, but no more than that) - instead it\s "Stumble And Fall" which is pretty catchy and has got some lovely intricate guitar work on it.  The rest of the album isn't terrible but it also isn't great - it's interesting that "Stumble And Fall" is so well put together because most of the other tracks feel very slapdash.  With hindsight it turns out they probably weren't the saviours of indie rock and roll that many proclaimed them to be.  They're still better than The Strokes though - and I do like the album cover.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on their sixteenth week of a 33 week which feels somewhat generous until you hear that it's their second run and they spent 34 weeks in their first run - all in all it's spent 84 weeks in the charts with it peaking at #3 in its first week.  The top five this week were James Blunt (his first week at #1 and the start of an eight week run there), Coldplay, Faithless, Kaiser Chiefs (these four all stay in the top five for the next nine weeks) and Keane and the highest new entry was Hard-fi (#6) with an album I like but haven't listened to in ages.

Wikipedia has less than I was expecting on the album and most of it relates to the critics comments which weren't nearly as positive as I remembered - it's funny how some love Johnny Burrell's delivery and some very much do not.  What's also quite surprising is that sold 1.2 million copies over here and appeared on the year-end lists for '04, '05 and '06 - not high, but it was there.

"Customers also listened to" The Kooks, The Libertines, Maximo Park (sadly under-rated imho) and Hard-fi - all a very similar sounding stuff there.  But Razorlight were not the best example of such things and I struggle to imagine too many people revisit this album very often.

03/07/05 - Perfectly acceptable, but perfectly inessential
17/07/05 - Certainly could have been worse