You were 20 something, now you're 25
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts
21/06/24 : Midnight Butterflies - Sea Girls
Well this is an unexpected surprise - I have heard of Sea Girls, but can't claim to be an expert and it makes a pleasant change to have something I don't already know exactly what I'm going to get - and both quite high and quite low in the chart as well, but more on this later.
Applying a generic tag to it, it's indie-pop-rock, the likes of which you've heard a million times before. But, it's very well done indie-pop-rock and it wears its numerous influences unapologetically on its sleeve - The Killers (the vocalist sounds very like Brandon Flowers at times) and Coldplay are the most obvious touchpoints for me, but I also heard hints of U2, Radiohead and The Vamps in there at times, so it explores more of the indie-pop-rock spectrum than you might expect. There's plenty of musical skill on display and considerably more variety than I was expecting - it also has a cracking title track to open it as well. If you like any of the bands I mentioned, then I reckon this is well worth checking out - I liked it.
We're at #5 in the charts this week which is lower than we've been for some time, but higher than I was expecting to see Sea Girls (but I'm totally wrong here - once again, more on this later!). The rest of the top five are Taylor (she ain't going anywhere for a bit), Billie, Charli and The Weeknd best-of (really?) and we have one more new entry in the top ten for, quite obviously, Paul McCartney & Wings (#10 - this is a load of stuff they recorded live nearly 50 years ago and I listened to the start of it and enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting).
There are actually quite a few new entries spread throughout the chart, but I ignored most of them on name alone because they were obviously rappy types. However, I did dip into John Grant (#28 - pretty much what I was expecting so it's too weird to make a firm decision on first listen, but it's promising) and The Decemberists (#92 - as is generally the case, the good bits are really good but the overblown bits are, well, maybe a bit overblown). There's a few more albums of interest across the chart - Chappell Roan (#9 - she's been climbing steadily for a couple of months and has now hit the top ten), Foo Fighters (#19 - up from #42 because they're touring) and David Bowie (#39 - a 6 CD box set which can be yours for a mere £130) and Bruce Springsteen (#56 - another re-entry on account of touring).
Last week I said that Charli would drop to #40 which makes it two weeks in a row that I've got it horribly wrong - with this probably being the wrongest I've been, but I'm pleased for Charli. I'd like Sea Girls to hang about, but I struggle to imagine it happening so I'm going for #57. And this week's Taylor stats are three in the top ten, six in the top twenty and eleven in the entire chart.
Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - but I was surprised to see it's their third album and even more surprised to see that both previous albums got to #3 and have been mentioned in previous blog posts, but they didn't get full write-ups. The rest of their entry is remarkably light on detail - they exist and that's about it.
"Customers also listened to" The Ks, The Snuts, Red Rum Club and The Lathums - all of which are very much in the same ballpark of Sea Girls. But, from a place of very limited knowledge, Sea Girls feel a step above the rest in terms of both song-writing and musical ability - I really quite liked this.
Comments
Post a Comment