I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

26/12/25 : I Barely Know Her - Sombr

Christmas week gives us some odd albums - last year we had Lana del Rey's album from '12, which hasn't left the chart all year. I'm pleased to say we're somewhat more up to date this year with an album that came out in August - I met it as a new entry and was somewhat nonplussed by it, but I have mentioned it a couple of times since because it's just not gone away, which is somewhat unusual. So let's see what I make of it on a second listen (this trick totally failed to convince me of the virtues of Addison Rae earlier today).

Well, well, well - Sombr at least intrigues on second listen. I'd struggle to describe it - it's kinda poppy indie with a woozy vibe to it, but it feels like it has depths to it and I reckon the more you listen to it, the more you pick up on. Intriguing indeed - I'd love to tell you more but that's all I got for the time being.

We're at #28 in the charts this week on his 18th consecutive week having debuted at #10, which is the highest it's been - but it's not been out of the top thirty, which is pretty rare these days. The top five this week are Bublé (yay!), Olivia Dean, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Fleetwood Mac (which feels like an odd one to celebrate Xmas with - and their best-of is at #6 as well). Somewhat surprisingly, we also have some new entries to discuss this week (but it ain't gonna take us long).

Vince Guaraldi Trio (#71)
This is a most peculiar new entry - A Charlie Brown Christmas is a US TV special which first aired in '65 and this is the soundtrack which has been popular ever since and has sold over five million copies over there. But, until now, it's never charted here - and I've got no idea what caused it to happen this week. Unfortunately, Vince died of a heart attack in '76 at the age of 47 but this has given a lot of people a lot of pleasure over the years - I'd say it's charming and joyous, but it's not something I'd ever actually choose to listen to. 

Kings College Choir (#85)
I'm quite surprised they've only had four Xmas albums in the chart over the years - this feels like something they'd roll out every year (and they've got another one at #48 this week). 

Laufey (#96)
We met Laufey earlier in the year and I had no idea what to do with her, so I'm somewhat surprised she's done a Christmas album - although it's more an EP and was originally released in '22. And well, it's err, quite something - you'd never guess it was recorded by a 23 year old. It's kinda old style jazzy cabaret - a bit peculiar but way better than Kylie's Xmas offering.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, it's quite the week for Xmas albums with re-entries resulting in ten of them in the chart - the weirdest re-entry is Jade's offering (#31) which is normally the result of the deluxe version coming out, but that happened three weeks ago. Last week I said that Bring Me The Horizon would be a "one and done" and it most definitely is - I suspect Sombr will go up because we lose a few Xmas albums, so let's go for #25. 

Wikipedia tells us it's his debut album and he wrote all of it, using session musicians to record it - bizarrely, one of them, Kane Richotte, was part of DEV2.0, which was a group of child actors who mimed along to Devo tracks. Who exactly was asking for that? Looking at Sombr's entry, the guy's only 20 - not a bad effort for one so young! Critically, it's mostly been well received with comparisons drawn with The Beach Boys, which hadn't occurred to me but I can see. Commercially, it's made the top ten in quite a few countries, making the top five in all the Scandinavian countries and #10 in the US. 

discogs.com tells us that you can buy two copies, both of which are available for exactly £32.95 - knock yourself out! But, I surprised myself by how much I almost enjoyed this - which sounds like faint praise, but if you're being paying ANY attention all year then you'll know this is a pretty good review from me and it wins album of the week, although A Charlie Brown Christmas is also pretty cute.

And, somewhat weirdly, that's it for the year! How did that happen?!? It's going to be a few days before I do the write-up for the year (because we need to get the year-end chart in order to complete it) but I'm not currently not entirely sure what I thought of it, so it will be interesting to see where my thoughts end up. 

19/12/25 - I enjoyed this