Envious of the glimmer of hope

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

28/02/25 : People Watching - Sam Fender

Our second visit with Sam and I enjoyed his last album, so have no reason to suspect I won't enjoy this.

And yeah, it is indeed enjoyable. He continues to follow a Springsteenesque path, with this taking a turn to the more downbeat side of things. I would say that some of the songs are a bit repetitive and I didn't hear anything on first listen as instant as "Seventeen Going Under", but mostly he carries it off pretty well. However, when he tries something a bit different as he does with the brass band on "Remember My Name", I think it works really well. 

We're at #1 with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Tate McRae (another new entry), Sabrina, PARTYNEXTDOOR/Drake and the Ed Sheeran live album - we actually don't have many other new entries to consider this week

Tate McRae (#2)
I've listened to this loads and I love it - and I'm really looking forward to seeing her live later in the year! Oh sorry - it seems my daughter hijacked this entry for a bit there, but funnily enough I have been subjected to most of this album and I can confirm it's perfectly fine (and towards the upper end of the quality spectrum for such things). According to Isobel, we'll be revisiting this next week because it'll be #1 - let's see, shall we?

The Murder Capital (#31)
I suspected I wasn't going to like this on name alone - and I can confirm it's a load of post-punk noise. It's not the worst post-punk noise though because it has some interesting retro elements - but I won't be listening to it again.

Killswitch Engage (#85)
And the same goes for this one - and I REALLY didn't like these US metalcore noise merchants! Except that every so often in their songs where they dial back the screaming and I found myself quite enjoying it - and then they just went off on one again to scare me away.

Last week I said that Manic Street Preachers would be at #17 in the charts this week and boy did I get that wrong because it's dropped out of the charts altogether. I can't see Sam dropping out entirely, but I don't think he's going to stay too high, so let's go for #67 and this week's Taylor stats are one in the top forty and six in the entire chart.

Wikipedia tells us this is his third album, it was produced by Adam Granducial, the frontman of The War On Drugs and the album cover is a Tish Murtha photo, who I know all about having watched this documentary. The critics were very nice about the album, praising its "social realism storytelling" and commercially it's done better in Europe than I expected - #2 in Ireland doesn't surprise me, but #2 in The Netherlands and #4 in Germany do.

"Customers also listened to" Inhaler, Wunderhorse, Circa Waves and Fontaines DC - a somewhat curious mix! I didn't mind this at all, but obviously it's not as good as the Tate McRae masterpiece - sorry, it seems like she's hijacked my keyboard again...

21/02/25 - Not bad at all
07/03/25 - Too shouty for me


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