I'm holding Heaven in my hands - it's automatic, baby

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

16/09/01 : A Funk Odyssey - Jamiroquai

Well, this is not good. Not only is it our fourth visit with Jamiroquai who have definitely proved they belong in the "if you've heard one, you've heard 'em all" category but we're also missing out on a much more interesting album (and group) as a result. More on this later - but first, more of the same...

Yup - definitely more of the same, but often a bit more boring than usual as well. I actually quite liked "Love Foolosophy" (it's way better than the title suggests and also features Beverley Knight on guest vocals - and she improves everything) but it also suffered because it just made me want to listen to The Cardigans' "Lovefool". The rest of the album is well put-together, but also really rather dull and I couldn't tell one song from another, except that some of them had weirder noises than others. And unfortunately I don't think this will be our last visit with the gang - they've had six top three and eight top ten albums.

We're at #1 in the charts this week on their second week of a 51 week run, with it spending its first two weeks at the top - all of which feels very generous of the record buying public. The rest of the top five were The Charlatans (a new entry), Bob Dylan (another one), Nelly Furtado and Groove Armada (and another one!) and we have two more new entries in the top ten for Louise (#9 - a best-of, which doesn't feel like it would be a very long album) and Mariah Carey (#10). 

Before we head back to Jamiroquai, I feel the need to discuss The Charlatans' Wonderland which is at #2 because I think this is a very decent album. Which isn't exactly unexpected for The Charlatans because they've done plenty of decent stuff over the years (they've been going since '88) but what makes this album somewhat unusual is that Tim Burgess adopts a strange high pitched voice for a lot of it, which sounds like it would be absolutely dreadful, but actually works really well with some top tracks on it - so check it out if you've not heard it.

Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album and has remarkably little else there - apparently it combines "elements of funk, disco and electronica". Nobody expected that, did they? I could search their entry for more interesting information, but I can't be arsed so let's just say that critically people were nicer to it than I expected and commercially people were much nicer to it than I expected, with it getting to #1 in Australia, France, Italy and Switzerland and even a decent enough #44 in the US. 

Despite being more popular than I expected, discogs.com tells us this isn't a fifty pence album because you're going to have to spend a whole quid to get your hands on one of these puppies and if you want the vinyl and CD reissue from '12 then you'll have to hand over £250! I do feel there are people out there with just too much money on their hands but I guess there are worse things they can do that splash out on Jamiroquai albums. However, on the evidence here, there are also considerably better things they could be doing.

23/09/01 - Decent enough but not for me