You made me feel like the one

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

03/04/05 : Language Sex Violence Other? - Stereophonics

I don't mind Stereophonics earlier stuff, but their last album was very inessential for me - but this feels early enough that it's gonna have some reasonable stuff on it, although I've never actually heard it.  And surprisingly (to me, at least) it's their top listed album on Amazon Music which immediately upped my expectations since it must get more than a few repeat listens.

And yeah, I really liked this - it's a bit more polished than Performance And Cocktails and reminded me of Manic Street Preachers and U2 (it's got their nice Unforgettable Fire guitar sound on it).  I feel I should have more to say about it - no one track jumped out at me, but it was an impressive first listen which I intend to repeat at some point.  All in all, a very pleasant and unexpected find indeed.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on their third week of an impressive thirty week run and it managed further runs of six and seven weeks in '06 - pleasingly it spent its first four weeks in the chart at positions #1, #2, #3 and #4!  The rest of the top five were best-ofs from Tony Christie (his second week at the top, very much benefiting from his involvement with Peter Kay and Comic Relief) and Basement Jaxx, 50 Cent and New Order (a new entry) and the next highest new entry is Will Smith (#15).

Wikipedia tells me this is their fifth album and reminds me that "Dakota" was a big thing at the time, getting to #1 (their only single to do so).  Interestingly, the album title comes from a BBFC consumer notice for a James Dean DVD, which really makes me wonder what "Other?" relates to.  The critics were quite mixed on the album with some liking it but others feeling they were trying too hard to be hipster - commercially it didn't do loads except for here and in Ireland, where it also got to #1.

"Customers also listened to" Oasis, The Verve, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight - all of which is a bit strange because I don't think this album sounds anything like any of them.  But Stereophonics are a bit strange because their albums tend not to sound like their other albums - but I really liked this one!

27/03/05 - Fine, but I don't need a whole album of it
10/04/05 - Perfectly fine and perfectly unnecessary

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t
Read more

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more