You got the t-shirt, do you know how the song goes?

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

18/09/15 : Keep The Village Alive - Stereophonics



Somewhat surprisingly, this is our fourth visit with the lads (ranging from '99 to '22) and it's been a bit of a mixed bag so far with their earlier stuff being far better than their later stuff, so I fear this will be somewhere on the downward slope.

And I guess it is, but it still seems far enough the slope to be enjoyable enough - they certainly sound like they're mellowing as middle age approaches, but it's got a nice expansive sound on it in places. I particularly liked "Fight Or Flight" and there was certainly nothing hateful on the original album - but the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition manage to make the album worse in every possible way. I'm really not sure what's going on with that album cover though.

Once again, we're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of an impressive nineteen week run. The rest of the top five this week were Bring Me The Horizon, The Libertines, Jess Glynne and Duran Duran, with only Jess not being a new entry and we also have Richard Hawley (#9) in there as well.

Wikipedia has an amazing amount (123 milliPeppers) on an album that no-one remembers these days. It's their ninth album, there were some singles released from it and some critics liked it and some didn't. Commercially, it had an astonishingly mediocre performance except for here which I guess is to be expected, unless you consider how much Stereophonics resemble U2 across their career and look what they managed to achieve.

"Customers also listened to" Richard Ashcroft, Liam & Noel Gallagher and Kings Of Leon - well that's not exactly a parade of the sane and or interesting (with the notable exception of KoL).. But Stereophonics have maintained their not-quite-middle-of-the-road position well over the years (see also Manic Street Preachers) and this album is perfectly listenable, if not exactly exciting.

11/09/15 - Such a slog
25/09/15 - Astonishingly successful, yet bang average

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