I'll mirage this garage with a photo-montage

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

12/06/05 : Get Behind Me Satan - The White Stripes

Our second visit to the weird brother/sister/husband/wife combo and I don't mind a bit of White Stripes - as long as it's only a bit.  Too much is just way too much for me - although I suspect I have a higher White Stripes threshold than many, so I'm at least interested to hear this.

Yeah, the tracks are interesting but a whole album is too much for me - the quirk gets just too much, although there's a bit more variety of quirk than I think I was expecting (I particularly liked "The Nurse" with its marimba).  I don't think I've really got anything more to say about it though - if you like TWS then I can't see any reason why you wouldn't like this (and you've probably already heard it).  It is, as you'd expect, a very stylish album cover though!

We're at #3 in the charts this week with a new entry at the start of a 33 week run, which feels like quite a decent run indeed.  The rest of the top five were Coldplay, (a new entry about to start a 68 week run in the charts), Oasis, James Blunt and Faithless and the next highest new entry was an ELO best-of (#11), which feels pretty generous for the time.

Wikipedia tells us it's their fifth album and different from their previous offerings because they've dialled down the guitars.  It also tells me that running themes throughout the album are truth and Rita Hayworth - both of which I'd have to say I missed.  One curiosity included is that the album wasn't released on vinyl for ten years, except for 600 which were pressed for journalists and will cost you upwards of £200 on the internet if you fancy one, it appears.  Commercially, it did pretty well, getting to #3 in a surprising number of countries - here, the US (selling almost a million copies), Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Norway!

"Customers also listened to" Jack White, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather - guess who is the common link there?!?  He's a man who gets around and no mistake - The White Stripes are my favourite of all his incarnations, but only in small doses.

05/06/05 - So, so annoying
19/06/05 - Really not good

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