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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 29/08/25 :  The Clearing  - Wolf Alice  Our third album visit (along with one festival visit) with Wolf Alice and I'm no closer to knowing what your typical Wolf Alice sound is or whether I like it - I very much doubt this will clear up the mystery. Nope - if anything, the mystery deepens. I actually quite liked the album but it has a 70s Fleetwood Mac/Carly Simon pop/rock kinda sound which I really wasn't expecting. I'm not sure what else to say - I suspect it would benefit from further listens but that just ain't gonna happen. I am intrigued as to whether it gains or loses them fans though (but I've no idea how I'd find that out!). We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week and the rest of the top five are The Deftones (another new entry), Laufey (ditto), Oasis and  Alex Warren  (he's doing very well) - and we've got quite the selection of (often badly spelled) new entries again t...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 18/09/88 : Sunshine On Leith -  The Proclaimers Well this is a very pleasant surprise! I have listened to it before, but not in many a long year so it will be lovely to catch up with the boys. Yeah, this is pretty decent. It's a set of heartfelt songs performed well with some lovely harmonies and more variety across the album than you might expect.  "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" and "I'm On My Way" are probably the best known tracks, but there's a good argument that the title track is the gem here because of its absolutely gorgeous lyrics - "y our beauty and kindness, m ade tears clear my blindness" and "w hile the Chief puts sunshine on Leith,  I'll thank Him for His work a nd your birth, and my birth". It's just lovely! We're at #6 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a very decent 27 week run - I suspect "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/08/25 :  Everywhere I Went, Led Me To Where I Didn't Want to Be  - Tom Grennan  A somewhat late visit this week (due to a lovely holiday) but I've made it just before the next chart which is released later today. This is our third visit with Tom (and his third consecutive #1) and my opinion definitely improved over the course of the previous two visits, so let's see if he can keep up the trend. He's definitely going for a Harry Styles kinda sound here with hints of Bruno Mars - I wouldn't say he scales the Harry Heights or the Mars Mountains, but it's certainly not dreadful and will probably be a grower for those in the market for such a thing. I did think it was lacking in lyrical content, but maybe the people of interest aren't in the market for radical stuff like that. It also felt like a long album, but it's only 45 minutes so I suspect it was struggling to hold my interest - but let'...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 25/09/88 : Staring At The Sun -  Level 42 Our second visit with Level 42 (and I'd completely forgotten the previous one ) and our fourth album that "we" own this year - I reckon it's gonna be an enjoyable enough visit. Yeah, I think it just about sneaks into "enjoyable enough". The main problem is that it just doesn't have a "Running In The Family" or "Hot Water" on it -    I just about remembered "Heaven In My Hand" and I quite liked "Two Hearts Collide", but it's safe to say this isn't peak Level 42. There are also  one or two tracks that left me thinking "well, that wasn't great", but overall I think the sound is pretty much what you'd expect from an average pop/funk fusion band - Level 42 just made things difficult for themselves by punching well above their weight at times. I'm also not sure how many people need the 150 minute...

  My last festival day of the year! My first choice All Points East show this year would have been Raye on Saturday and my second would have been The Maccabees on Sunday but through a process of extremely bad planning, I was on holiday for both of them. This involved getting up at ridiculous o'clock on Saturday morning but that didn't stop me going to the Friday session headlined by Barry Can't Swim - who is someone I am vaguely aware of and don't mind, but the real draw for me was Orbital who I've seen twice at Glastonbury and absolutely love. And, as with my previous All Points East visit , this was a game of two halves - although, spoiler alert, neither half featured a five hour set... What the first half did feature though is a LOT of DJ sets. My general view of DJ sets is somewhat coloured by my impressive lack of knowledge of the skills involved - it's very much a case of "I like what I like" but I'm generally unable to explain to you what it...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 02/10/88 : New Jersey -  Bon Jovi Our sixth (really?!?) visit with Jon and the boys and with the exception of Slippery When Wet , I've not been all that impressed. As the follow-up to SWW, I feel this probably stands the strongest chance of being bearable but I can't say my expectations are sky-high. It starts with two singles "Lay Your Hands On Me" and "Bad Medicine" which were both considerably heavier than I was expecting - but it's generally got a similar feel to SWW, although with a bit more variety. Whilst not really being my cup of tea (particularly for 57 minutes, when it often takes itself very seriously - the deluxe version is over two hours long!), it was all done well enough and perfectly listenable (and way better than their later albums). It all feels quite cleverly orchestrated to be acceptable for both teenage boys and girls - and it seems like that plan worked pretty well.  We're...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 09/10/88 : Flying Colours -  Chris de Burgh Enya , U2 and now Chris - Ireland are doing well recently, aren't they? I'm expecting to find this perfectly fine and probably a lot more enjoyable than I'd ever have admitted to back in '88 - and it's the third album we've owned (and you can probably guess who "we" is here). I'd say there's nothing wrong with any of this if you take one track at a time because they're well crafted with (generally) a nice heartfelt message, but it's a bit lacking in variety across the whole album for me. Plenty of people loved it though so I guess he'd found the formula that worked for him and I can't really fault him for sticking to it. We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart on the start of a very decent 28 week run. The rest of the top five are Jean-Michel Jarre , Bon Jovi, Transvision Vamp (a new entry - awww, we're going to miss out...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 16/10/88 : Revolutions -  Jean-Michel Jarre Our fourth visit with JMJ and he was doing well at improving my opinion of him until the last album which I did not enjoy, so he's almost back at square one - the only way is up, I guess... Hmmm. At first I thought it was a bit of an improvement because he uses some more industrial sounds on the first four "Industrial Revolution" tracks and there are some interesting robot noises on "Revolution, Revolutions". But he then uses some animal noises and kids voices on later tracks which just made me think he'd discovered samplers and was just mucking about with them. The whole thing sounds like something that AI could chuck out in seconds these days, but I suspect it still probably didn't sound all that impressive in '88 - I thought it was all way less impressive than the stuff that Gary Numan was doing nine years earlier. We're at #5 in the charts this...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 23/10/88 : To Whom It May Concern -  The Pasadenas This week, we should be meeting Luther Vandross's Any Love and I was looking forward to comparing it with the Alexander O'Neal album we met recently, but for some reason it's not available on any streaming service. So instead we get The Pasadenas who I remember being very popular for a bit, but I was just as mystified as their success. The sound isn't a million miles away from Alexander/Luther, but has a bit more interest for me because it's a group so there's some nice harmonies. I just about remembered "Riding On A Train" and "Tribute (Right On)" and the rest of it isn't a million miles away - as with Alexander (and probably Luther), none of it is dreadful but I really don't understand what it's got that people liked so much. We're at #6 in the charts this week on their second week of a 21 week run, with it peaking at #...

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts. 30/10/88 : Rage -  T'Pau I loved their debut album, Bridge Of Spies, which we're definitely going to listen to at some point (and it may well be earlier in the year) but I don't believe I've ever listened to this - it's weird how you can just totally drop a band for no reason. So I'm looking forward to this... Yeah, this was perfectly fine - it is sounding a bit dated now, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of late 80s nostalgia. I only recognised "Secret Garden" which was easily the most successful single from the album and the album's definitely lacking a "China In Your Hand" equivalent - I think they've done reasonably well for their "difficult second album" but it definitely suffers from being more of the same, but somehow also less. We're at #4 in the chart this week with a new entry (our first new entry of the year) on their first week of a thirteen week ...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   top 50 films of 2024 #39 :     Hashvi Shashvi Maq'vali (Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry) Elene Naveriani’s film, about a single woman in a remote Georgian village whose life is changed for ever after a near-death experience, is a gentle gem about midlife love and loneliness. This is a film that stood quite a large chance of getting skipped over but our last Georgian film was better than expected and there's a run of foreign films coming up which sound unremittingly depressing or cryptic - so I'm going to give this one a go. Hmmm - it's a peculiar one. We basically follow Etero  (Eka Chavleishvili) who is a middle-aged, not classically beautiful, lonely woman who nearly dies by falling in a river, which results in her being more open to new possibilities - one of them being Murman (Temiko Chichinadze), a middle-aged, not classically handsome, lonely man. But does she want to surrender her hard-earned freedom and independence? An...