A call from out the window, a shirt I never cleaned

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

20/06/25 : Don't Tell The Dog - James Marriott 

Not a name I know, but it makes me think of James Herriott - will it be farmyard noises? Probably not...

Yeah, I quite liked this - it's got a decent sound to it. I read he likes Foals and you can definitely hear that on this but I was also reminded of Howard Jones and RHCP in places - I'm interested to see how much James contributes because there's some very decent keyboard and guitar skills on display here. I'm quite surprised it got to #1 but I guess it's all about the fans and he must have enough of them - either that or everyone just loved the dog on the album cover.

We're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week and the rest of the top five are the Oasis best-of (up from #14 in the charts last week, with 615 weeks on the chart), Sabrina, Ed Sheeran and Pulp (who were very good live). So what other new entries do we have this week?

The Cure (#9)
This is a remix album of Songs Of A Lost World, which was an album I liked so much I listened to it TWICE - wow! And I'm sure this is all very good but it's 24 tracks which last 152 minutes, and I really don't have that time to invest just at the minute - but if I have a long task which needs some background music I'll try to remember this exists.

Lil Tecca (#17)
I don't have the best relationship with all the Lils, but I'm pleased to report this is the second album from a Lil Someone that didn't make my ears bleed. It's not great, but let's take our victories where we can.

AJ Tracey (#37)
This seems very low in the charts for AJ and, from my position of limited knowledge of the genre, I don't know why. It feels like the sort of the things youths go for these days so I don't understand why it's not higher.

Calum Hood (#54)
Not a name I was previously aware of, but he's kinda Tom Grennan-ish - I didn't mind it, but it was pretty forgettable.

Half Man Half Biscuit (#64)
I find HMHB amusingly diverting when I stumble across them but I soon tire of them and wouldn't search them out - this feels to fit right in to that description. There are some amusing track titles though - "Horror Clowns Are Dickheads", "Rawlplugs Of Yesteryear", "No-one Likes A Polymath" and "Don't Get Me Wrong Yvonne".

The wildest re-entry this week is Metallica's Load (#48) which has been re-released as a £250 luxury boxset - I'm amazed I've managed to resist the temptation to splash out on it. Last week I said that Pulp would drop to #35 and we've already seen how wrong I got that one, so let's go for #35 for James next week (mostly because I've got absolutely no clue how he might do). And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top fifty and six in the entire chart, but the bottom two are at #97 and #98, so things may change for the worse for the poor lass next week.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album but James's entry tells us he's a YouTuber, this is his second album and he's mainly a guitarist, although his band also features three other guitarists.  There's not loads on the album, but apparently everyone thinks it's better than his first one.

Weirdly, discogs.com only has one copy for a sale which is a blue vinyl version for £25 - take it or leave it! I'm not sure I'll ever listen to this again but I really quite enjoyed it and it takes the album of the week for me - at least until I get round to listening to The Cure, which I suspect I'll enjoy but it might prove to be a bit too much of a challenge.

13/06/25 - Pretty decent

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