I sometimes wonder "What would I do in the next generation?"

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

31/10/25 : The Boy Who Played The Harp - Dave

Our third visit with Dave and I really liked Psychodrama his first album, but found it a case of diminishing returns on his second - here's hoping he at least halts the decline.

Yeah, he certainly does that and there may even be a slight up-tick - but it still doesn't hit the heights of his debut for me. He's much more personally reflective of his past behaviour here - I get the impression he's not overly impressed with how he dealt with fame and he gives himself a good talking to at times. So it's certainly honest, considered and intelligent with Dave also having the advantage of being more understandable than most, but I can't say I overly cared about what he was saying. The only other thing I think I have to say about it is that Tems has a lovely voice - I'd not heard her on anything before. If you like this sort of thing though, I suspect you'll be into this - I thought it was a "good" album, but it wasn't one I'll be going back to.

We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week, so he deserves extra points for knocking Taylor off the top - whilst I might not have loved his album it's much more interesting than hers. She's not even at #2 either because the rest of the top five are Bon Jovi (a "new" entry), Taylor Swift, Lily Allen (a proper new entry) and Olivia Dean - and boy do we have a lot of new entries this week...

Bon Jovi (#2)
This isn't really a new album at all, but a "legendary" edition of their album from last year. And I didn't listen to it, because when I previously met it my comment was "I wasn't going to check this out because I knew I'd hate it, but in the end I decided to give them a chance.  And I hated it"

Lily Allen (#4)
Well, this is QUITE the listen. It covers the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour and it's fair to say she's leaves no stone unturned. She's also played a blinder because she's said it's about things “I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel” so he can't really do or say anything about it. I quite liked the songs - I wouldn't say they're as catchy as her best known numbers but they're certainly worth a listen for the lyrics alone. You find yourself feeling quite sorry for her but also not really believing that she's telling you EVERYTHING!

Sigrid (#12)
I've always liked Sigrid's stuff whilst being amazed that she appears to be about twelve - and that very much continues here, although looking at the album cover, I reckon she might have finally hit her teens. It's grown up pop though - she too has had some relationship issues, but she's applied a much lighter touch than someone else we met recently - amusingly this album is called There's Always Something More I Could Say and Lily definitely could not have gone for that. It's all more about the music here and I liked it a lot - very enjoyable.

Bruce Springsteen (#14)
This isn't really new either - it's a compilation of tracks from the Nebraska recordings from '82. I'm sure it's fascinating for those that love to dig deep into The Boss and I suspect I'd enjoy quite a bit of it, but it's 37 tracks and 144 minutes and I'm afraid life is just too short for such nonsense.

Skye Newman (#18)
At the other end of the scale, we have six tracks from a 21 year old. She reminded me of Elle King and so I really quite liked it - I could have done with a bit more of this.

The Clause (#19)
I'd never heard of this lot but they do Arctic Monkeys-esque indie-pop - and they do it pretty well if you like that sort of thing.

Elton John (#24)
In a weird week for "new entries", this is a 50th anniversary of Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, which I've never listened to so I should really check it - but it's a busy week this week so he'll have to wait until I get to '75.

Brandi Carlile (#30)
Quite coincidentally, the only time we've met (or even mentioned) Brandi was earlier this year when she released a very decent album with Elton - and there's nothing wrong with this one either (the women are doing well this week). I particularly liked "Church & State" - it's a bangin' track.

Henry Moodie (#31)
Somewhat surprisingly, young Henry is an artist I've seen live and he's one of those talented young men who are very much in touch with his feelings and happy to share. Which I'm generally fine with, but I must admit I did start thinking "he can't really have that much to worry about, can he?". It's very much not aimed at me though, so let's not think about these things too much.

Daniel Caesar (#41)
This is some kind of soulful R&B thing - it isn't really my sort of thing but it's done well enough. I'm trying to decide who he sounds like but I'm not coming up with anyone, so it gets some points for that at least - for me, it's maybe like a more accessible and less frenetic Frank Ocean?

The highest re-entries are from Dave (#19 and #26) which are completely unsurprising, Pulp's Different Class (#38) is a bit more surprising until you realise it's a 30th anniversary release - the only re-entry I can't find an obvious reason for is Benson Boone, but he's at #99 so he doesn't really need a reason for that. Last week I said that The Last Dinner Party would be at #23 and I'm a bit out because they're at #55 but I feel I could have been considerably further away. Dave's gonna do better than that though, isn't he - I'm tempted to go for #23 again but I reckon he'll stay in the top ten, so let's go for #7. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten and a mere five in the entire chart (with the lowest at #92).

Wikipedia tells us it's his third album and the title relates to 1 Samuel 16:14–23 in the Bible, where Saul summoned a young, brave shepherd, David, to play the harp to soothe him as he was being troubled by evil spirits. The themes section is quite interesting because it lists God, faith, destiny, anxiety, overthinking, fear of failure, infidelity to his ex-girlfriend, success guilt, therapy, alcoholism, sobriety, oppression in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, blood diamonds, his urge to speak on the genocide in Palestine, the potential repercussions on his career, his advocacy for boycotts of Israel, corruption in many African countries, slavery in the Trucial States, the mistreatment of locals from those on vacation, domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape and methods of sexual harassment!

He's a very serious young man, that Dave - and the critics love him for it with them all being very nice about it, with the only less than glowing comment being from NME who said "its sombre weight occasionally tempers its immediacy". Commercially, it's done better globally than I expected, getting to #4 in Belgium and Iceland, #2 in The Netherlands and #1 in Ireland. He'd going to have to get angrier if he wants to do well in Finland though because he's only got to #86 over there.

discogs.com only has one copy for sale and given it's a limited edition double album with transparent amber vinyl with black smoke (which sounds like it could look gorgeous) then £29.99 seems like a bargain. This is certainly a fine album which he's put a lot of work into, but it didn't grab me in the way it did the critics, I'm afraid. Most of the albums I listened to this week have a lot going for them - Lily Allen certainly deserves credit (and a listen) for what she's done but I'm not sure I'd rush back to hear her baring her soul. So I think Sigrid and Skye Newman share the album of the week award for me for two very listenable offerings, with Brandi Carlile close behind them - the ladies have done a lot of interesting things this week.

07/11/25 - Yeah, I liked this
24/10/25 - Interesting, but hard to describe