You don't need to laugh so hard, you don't have to wear a tie
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts
11/04/25 : Who Believes In Angels? - Elton John & Brandi Carlile
Our fourth visit to an Elton John album (along with two singles visits) but our first visit with Brandi Carlile - I'm not aware that I've ever heard anything by her, but I suspect I must have heard something. Either way, I'm intrigued as to what this is going to be like.
You know what? This is pretty good - I liked it. It's very much a joint effort - on some songs, Elton just provides backing vocals and he doesn't appear at all on "Without Me", which is a lovely song. I also particularly liked "The Rose Of Laura Nyro" but all the songs are pretty decent - he's still got a great voice and Brandi's is good too and they work well together. I think this hails back to some of his great albums from the 70s - it's a very enjoyable listen. I'm not sure it's such an enjoyable album cover though...
We're at #1 with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Sabrina (of course), Black Country, New Road (another new entry), Ariana Grande and the Ed Sheeran live album (who's listening to this?). So what other new entries have we got this week?
- Black Country, New Road (#3)
Having seen them recently-ish supporting Nick Cave, I'm really quite looking forward to hearing this. Hmmm - it's amusingly quirky for a couple of songs, but it could do with a bit more variety to the quirk on first listen.
- Ethel Cain (#10)
This is an interesting one because it came out in '22 and we've already met it and it's a great album - but it was released on vinyl for the first time this week, so it's finally charted. However, this all got me very confused so I instead listened to Perverts, her release from January - and I can thoroughly recommend that if you fancy thinking to yourself "WTF IS THIS?!?" because it's one of the weirdest albums I've listened to in a long time.
- Djo (#54)
I've no idea about this - I'm going to guess it'll be dance-y because of the presence of the letters D & J. And I'm hopelessly way off the mark, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd describe this - electro-singer-songwriter? I didn't mind it at all - I was reminded of Mylo or Tom Vek if you remember either of them. Wikipedia tells me that Djo is actually Joe Keery who is probably better known as Steve Harrington from Stranger Things (and he was also in the last season of Fargo, which was very enjoyable) - he's a talented dude.
- The Waterboys (#72)
I'm interested to hear what this is like because I don't think I've listened to any "new" Waterboys stuff this century. Hmmm, well I wasn't expecting that - it's a very US 60s psychedelic-tinged rock sound. It's not unpleasant, but it's also not anything I feel the need for. It's called Life, Death and Dennis Hopper and Wikipedia helpfully tells us this is a reference to Dennis Hopper - thanks guys!
- Smith/Kotzen (#73)
No idea about this one either - it feels like a good name for an ambient duo, so let's guess at that. Yup, well that's wrong because this is ROCK! Again not something I feel the need for, but it all sounds like it's done well - Wikipedia tells me they are Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden and Richie Kotzen of The Winery Dogs, so if you like either of those groups I suspect you might like this.
- Miki Berenyi Trio (#90)
I know Miki used to be the lead singer of Lush - I'm expecting this to be nicely weird. Actually, it's not that weird at all because it's just like Lush really - I quite liked it.
And the wildest re-entry of the week is quite obviously Tracy Chapman's debut album (#45) - but that's because it's the only re-entry this week. Last week I said that Mumford & Sons would drop to #46 and it's at #59, so I'll take that as a partial victory - I think Elton will do a bit better, but not loads so let's go for #35. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top thirty and six in the entire chart.
Wikipedia tells me this is Elton's 33rd studio album and Brandi's 8th - the whole thing was produced in twenty days and it sounds like everyone found it challenging but enjoyable (and the results are very impressive for that timescale). Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few famous names involved including Bernie Taupin, Andrew Watt, Pino Palladino and a couple of members of Red Hot Chili Peppers - Josh Klinghoffer and Chad Smith. Taking an unexpected diversion to Chad Smith's Wikipedia entry, he's played with a fascinatingly diverse selection of artists including Johnny Cash, Kid Rock, Jake Bugg, Post Malone, Lana del Rey, Halsey, Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Lady Gaga and Dick van Dyke. Getting back to Elton and Brandi's offering, it's been very well reviewed critically and has done well commercially, getting to #2 in Austria and Germany.
"Customers also listened to" Joni Mitchell, Mumford & Sons, Lady Gaga and Tom Grennan, which is a most peculiar mix. Having said that, there are certainly elements to this album that would appeal to all of those fanbases - it's a very well-rounded effort which I really enjoyed and recommend you check out. It takes the album of the week for me, but Ethel Cain and Djo are also worth a listen (but don't listen to the wrong Ethel Cain album unless you fancy a challenge).
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