While you got your head in the clouds and talking so loud

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

16/10/05 : As Is Now - Paul Weller

Our third all-male album in a row means the men have made it up to 50% - I was worried about them for a bit!  This is an album I've never heard of and you never know what you're getting from Paul over the years - I'm guessing it'll be fine but unremarkable.

I think unremarkable would be a bit harsh - there's some nice enough songs on there, but like a few we've seen recently it's lacking the highpoints to make it stand out from the crowd.  I did quite liked the lower tempo "To The Start Of Forever", but like a few other tracks on this and other albums he's done recently, it's just got too much thrown into it - sometimes less is more, Paul.

We're at #4 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a six week run - it then took Xmas and New Year off and came back in February for another six week run, but this was as high as it got.  The rest of the top five this week were Sugababes (a new entry), James Blunt, Katie Melua and Franz Ferdinand, which is a better top five than we've seen for most of the year and the next highest new entry was Bryn Terfel (#10).

Wikipedia tells me this is his eighth album, it lists the singles and tells me it was recorded in Buckinghamshire - and that's it.  The critics were generally favourable about it and there's absolutely no word on commercial response, so I assume it did nothing elsewhere.

"Customers also listened to" The Jam, The Style Council, Leah Weller (I wonder who her dad is?) and David Gray - I'm not sure I quite see how David fits in there, but I can just about work out the link for the others.  I didn't mind this album and was pleased to catch up with it - it could be a grower, but all the flourishes and extra instruments could also have the opposite effect (would that make it a shrinker?) and at first listen it's hard to say is the more likely.

09/10/05 - Better than I remembered it being
23/10/05 - All a bit underwhelming 

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