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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 27/09/24 :  Gary - Blossoms Somewhat surprisingly, this is our FOURTH visit with Blossoms and it's all been a pretty peculiar mix - last time I described it as "indie-folk-disco" (whatever that is!).  So who knows quite what we're going to get here! Well, it's certainly not indie-folk-disco! On face value, it's pretty standard indie fare but the songs also have a definite 70s/80s retro vibe to them. I was trying to decide who they reminded me of and it took me most of the album, but I got there in the end - it was New Order, but the songs aren't as repetitive as you might expect from that reference. I quite enjoyed it, but it feels it would need several more listens to really get into - I'd certainly say it's worth checking out. I can't decide if I like the album cover or not though... We're at #1 with a new entry this week (their fourth #1 album) and the rest of the top five are ...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 29/06/58 : The Duke Wore Jeans OST - Tommy Steele Another week skipped over (which has absolutely nothing remarkable to discuss) brings us to someone I've not enjoyed our previous visits with and I also struggle to imagine me enjoying a film with that title, so let's just say expectations are not high here. Hmmm - it's not great, but it's not dreadful. I can see that it appealed to the "youth of the day" - it's all about a Cockney infiltrating the upper classes whilst pointing out the nonsense of it all. He's got a very characterful voice which tells a story well, if not the best singing voice - but the absolutely best bit about it was that it was only twenty minutes long. We're at #5 with a new entry on the chart this week - and that was all it ever managed. The rest of the top five were  My Fair  Lady  (a new entry at the top - our first of the year),  South Pacific  (another new entry),  Fr...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 13/07/58 : Sings The Irving Berlin Songbook - Ella Fitzgerald Another three weeks skipped which all looked very familiar with My Fair Lady at the top for all of them and we come to this, the rarest of all flowers of these times. An actual woman! We did hear Kitty White's voice on one of the Elvis album and My Fair Lady and South Pacific have been doing well throughout the year, but this is the first time so far that a woman has been named as the album artist - and I'm expecting Ella to do a mighty fine job of it too. She starts with a nicely slowed down version of "Let's Face The Music And Dance" which conveys more of the menace in the song than most. And it continues in a very similar vein of quality, with her lovely voice covering a decent amount of variety across waaay more tracks than I was expecting - 95 minutes of them! The ones that jumped out of at me were ones I knew - "Puttin' On The Ritz...

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.   2013 : Riptide  - Vance Joy This is a track I don't recognise from the name, but I suspect I'll know it when I hear it. Yeah - but only the chorus and I'm not sure I've ever actually properly listened to it all the way through. It's that kinda happy ukelele folk that annoys me - but this just about manages to stay the right side of the line. Don't get me wrong, it's not great - but it could be worse and it does have a nicely quirky video. Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the track, but most of it is about how successful it was - and boy was it successful! Particularly in Australia (where he's from) where it holds the record for most consecutive weeks on the chart at 120 - yes, over two years! Interestingly, it's never made it to #1 anywhere (it got to #10 here and #30 in the US) but it's popularity abides on the streaming platforms - it was the most streamed Australian...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 10/08/58 : We Get Letters (Vol 2) - Perry Como We've skipped seven weeks this time and I've also ignored yet another Frank best-of (our second of the year) to bring us to an album that, in any other year, I would either ignore or dread - but given it's '58 I'm almost looking forward to it. Particularly when I see his shirt on the album cover. I thought I wasn't able to find the album anywhere but it was another one given a different name over here - it was called So Smooth everywhere else and I've absolutely no idea why. And I'd love to say tracking it down was worth the effort, but that would be somewhat overstating matters. None of it is dreadful, but it's all very dated in a Bing Crosby style - not a patch on our previous visit , I'm afraid. I didn't mind the Cole Porter numbers "You Do Something To Me" and "In The Still Of The Night" but it's all very inessent...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2023 #17 :     Anatomie D'Une Chute  (Anatomy Of A Fall) A gripping courtroom drama that makes multiple references to 50 Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P’, Anatomy Of A Fall above all else showcases the immense talents of Sandra Hüller (catch her next in Jonathan Glazer’s chilling The Zone Of Interest). Its premise is simple: a troubled marriage ends with the suspicious death of the husband after falling from the attic window of their family chalet. A heated case ensues, in which Hüller’s Sandra protests her innocence, while her partially blind son is caught in the crossfire. And don’t get us started on prize-winning pooch Messi, who won the Palm Dog at this year’s Cannes for his role as Snoop the family hound. The film is at once a masterful puzzlebox and a suspense-fuelled character study, and Justine Triet and Arthur Harari’s razor-sharp writing keep you enthralled until the final act. A couple of people recommended this to me last ...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 28/09/58 : Lonnie - Lonnie Donegan We've skipped over five weeks to get here and we've actually got some items of interest to discuss before we get. In the intervening period, we finally saw a different album at the top - obviously it was Elvis, before he handed it over to South Pacific for a SEVENTY ONE week run at the top. Yes, it was at #1 for all of '59. The other thing to note is that we've dropped to a chart of only five albums, which probably means that our time in '58 is not far off coming to an end.  But before that, we've got at least one more album to experience - I'm expecting to quite enjoy this. Yeah, it's not bad at all - it feels historically significant combining elements of blues, gospel and folk music in skiffle. It blends nicely with what Elvis was doing at the time - you can hear they share similar roots but are heading in slightly different directions. We're at #5 in the ch...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 20/09/24 :  The Forest Is The Path - Snow Patrol I find Snow Patrol inoffensive, if not, with the exception of a couple decent singles, exactly exciting - and I have absolutely no expectations that this will be anything different. Well, I can assure you that the legions of Snow Patrol fans will not be rioting in the streets due to a completely unexpected change of direction. It's all perfectly serviceable, only potentially offensive in its inoffensiveness (although the Bee Gee feel to the title track is a curious choice), but "Hold Me In The Fire" did jump out at me as a decent typical Snow Patrol track and "These Lies" is a nicely slower tempo number. I'm not desperate for Snow Patrol in my life but, if forced, I'd certainly take them over Coldplay these days. We are, unsurprisingly, at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week and the rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter , London Gramm...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 09/11/58 : Warm - Johnny Mathis Our third visit with Mr Mathis and I love his voice, so have pretty high expectations for this. Yup - nothing wrong with this any of this.  None of it exactly sets the world on fire because i t's very much in the swoony strings department, but it's well done examples of that sort of thing - he really did have a lovely voice. Apparently it's an album of covers, but I was very unfamiliar with most of them - there were a couple I vaguely recognised but I only really knew "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" (unsurprisingly Johnny does not try to replicate Rex Harrison's delivery) and "What'll I Do" (which I know best from Nat King Cole's version, but we recently met Bob Dylan having a go). We're at #7 on his second week of a two week run with it having peaked at #6 - and that was all it achieved, which seems a bit odd compared to how well some other a...

A weekend involving much travelling finishes up in Hammersmith I already knew I was in for a busy day yesterday when our youngest asked to go and see Arsenal Ladies play in the afternoon and The Vamps continue their endless "10 years since something happened' anniversary tour in the evening - what we didn't know when we booked it was that we'd all be up in Leeds the day before dropping the eldest off at uni. So after a very early start (which involved a surprising amount of panicking at not being able to find the way in to Leeds train station), we were somewhat starting to flag by the time we made it to the Eventim Apollo - but we had faith in The Vamps to restore our spirits. But first, like last time , we had a couple of support acts to experience - The Vamps seem to have a good track record in giving new acts a spot at their gigs. First up, we had SOAP which is a name that gives you no clues what you're going to get - and what we got was a clean cut bunch of guy...

Continuing  my trip back through the 1958 album charts. 16/11/58 : Songs By Tom Lehrer - Tom Lehrer I am aware of a couple of Tom songs and I like them, so I'm looking forward to this. Hmmm - it's an interesting one. It's all him singing ditties whilst playing the piano - and the ditties cover a most peculiar selection of styles and subjects including Harvard, nuclear testing, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (a mathematician, obviously) and familicide. For most the part they're wry rather than particularly humorous, but they're all very clever with some intelligent wordplay and rhymes. It's more something I appreciated rather than enjoyed, but I was glad to catch up with it - and at 24 minutes long it positively flew by. We're at #8 with a re-entry in the charts this week on his first week of a two week run (his second), but things really took off for him in '59 when he had a 13 week run, peaking at the dizzy heights of #7. The top five this week were the ...

  Another trip to the mothership, this time for spot of early '00s nostalgia  In the summer of '00, you really couldn't avoid Moby's Play album - not only did it spend five weeks at #1 but the tracks popped up in countless other random places as well. I bought it and quite liked it, but always thought it was a curious collection of tracks and I rarely made it all the way to the end of the album. And I'd not listened to it in ages, but when work offered a freebie to go and see the 25th anniversary tour at The O2, I was intrigued enough to make the trip in to see what it sounded like - I was slightly concerned it would just turn out to be him pressing "play" on a tape recorder (see what I did there?) but I hoped for better... First up though, we had support in the form of Lady Blackbird who I knew nothing about but was immediately intrigued as she strode onto the stage with the most fantastic hair and outfit - which you could barely see because the lighting ...