There’s so many ways to define our infinite states

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

12/09/25 : Antidepressants - Suede 

Our third visit with Suede and last time I enjoyed the album so much that I booked to see them live and had a really enjoyable evening. So I've got high hopes for this...

And it again delivers big time for me - it's got some great tunes on it with some particularly fine guitars and Brett wailing angrily (in a good way) over them. It opens very strongly with the first few tracks in particular standing out for me but there wasn't a dud track on there and I'm definitely going to make an effort to listen to it again. Particularly since I checked out if they were playing live to promote the album - and they're playing London this weekend and I got (allegedly) one of the last two standing tickets for tonight. Yay!

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter (of course), Oasis (still?!?), Ed Sheeran (huh?) and Fleetwood Mac (what??). Fortunately, we do have some slightly newer albums to consider this week

Red Rum Club (#7)
We've previously met them and I dismissed them as sixth-form indie but this feels a bit better than that. It's a lively enough combination of Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys - diverting enough, if not exactly ground-breaking.

Saint Etienne (#8)
Nicely quirky as expected - somewhat unexpectedly, it reminded me of 80s Pet Shop Boys stuff. I can't imagine it will convert anyone, but I suspect their long-standing fans (they formed in '90) are going to appreciate it. 

Tom Odell (#12)
I generally believe Tom to be the wettest of a pretty wet bunch, without being entirely sure how fair that is on Tom (or the alleged bunch of wets). However, if it's not fair then there's absolutely nothing here to refute that - he warbles on about stuff but I really don't care. I also have a suspicion he thinks he's Thom Yorke vocally - and he ain't.

Faithless (#15)
Wow, how long have they been going for? (since '95 apparently). I really like some of their stuff, but I wouldn't be able to particularly say what it is that makes it particularly enjoyable. But there are certainly the usual bits of it across this album (the slow beeps, the fast beeps, the doleful lyrics) and I enjoyed it, with "Driving" in particular ticking all the boxes.

Big Thief (#21)
This is US quirky indie which I like if I'm in the mood for it, but otherwise find annoying. Today, I didn't mind it - I thought the songs were well performed, but maybe not always the best constructed. I suspect I could listen to it again and either love it or hate it though.

David Byrne (#34)
We've got some really modern artists this week, haven't we? Dave falls into a similar category as Big Thief that I have to be in the mood for him - I think he also suffers from the fact that there's just so much of his stuff out there. I did like "I Met The Buddha At A Downtown Party" though - it made me proper chuckle.

Mazza_L20 (#42)
No idea about this artist from the name - hippy hopsters? Just the one hippy hopster actually and I started off dismissing him as an identikit, if bearable, US rapper - until I realised he had a Scouse accent. And, to my surprise, I wasn't minding it at all - it wasn't aimed at me in the slightest and I didn't understand half of what he was going on about but it had a decent flow to it with a fine collection of words, sounds and rhythms.

Shame (#86)
Ah - some post-punk funsters. Whilst I don't mind some of them, most of them leave me cold - let's just say Shame aren't the worst.

The weirdest re-entry this week is Slipknot (#71) - this was released in '99, so I suspect a 26 year anniversary release is unlikely to be responsible. Last week I said that Sabrina would stay at #1 and yay, I was right - I feel Suede are unlikely to do quite so well (even though it's a way better album) but it could end up anywhere, so let's go for #37. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top forty and five in the entire chart, which is quite the drop from last week - but don't worry, she'll be back and very soon!

Wikipedia has quite a lot for a new album by a UK artist (132 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's their tenth album and a "post-punk and gothic rock album with themes such as mortality and modern disconnection" - I knew that! It's also the second in a trilogy of "black and white" albums - I didn't know that but apparently, the original plans were to follow Autofiction with a ballet soundtrack but when it did so well, they decided (probably sensibly) maybe not to take that route. You also obviously know that "the front cover alludes to a 1962 Vogue photograph taken by John Deakin of the artist Francis Bacon in which he posed shirtless between two slabs of meat; the photo of Bacon is in turn a reference to his painting Figure with Meat".

The critical reviews have been very positive with the first half and the closing track,"Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment", getting particular praise - the band also get a lot of praise for continued growth in producing what's generally viewed as one of their best albums. Commercially, it's done OK in various random countries - #9 in Belgium, #28 in Finland and #47 in Japan. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD version for £15, a vinyl version for £25-£80 depending upon whether it's black, white or grey and a crystal clear/black version for £100 (I'm intrigued as to what that looks like) - but if you want to really splash out you need to go for the signed test pressing for £350.I really liked this and am looking for to this evening so it's easily my album of the week, but actually it feels like all the new entries were pretty decent this week - they weren't all in genres that I enjoy all the time, but they were well-constructed examples of such.

05/09/25 - Better than I was expecting