We'll sing these stupid songs forever

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

21/10/01 : Love Is Here - Starsailor


Somewhat surprisingly, this is our second visit with Starsailor and it's also one we owned (taking us to two for the year) - I don't remember loving it, but there must have been a reason I bought it, so I'm interested to see what that reason might be.

I liked "Alcoholic" and "Good Souls" (and believe they were the reason I bought the album) but the rest of the album is of a pretty similar standard - they're decent tracks which are performed well. Over the course of the whole album, the lead singer's voice does get a bit tiresome but it never quite gets too much so I think they just about get away with it. I remember there were plenty of comparisons with Coldplay at the time and it's definitely pretty Yellow-ish in places - it just didn't quite take off for them in quite the same way afterwards. Which I suspect comes down to the quality of their second albums - Silence Is Easy is certainly no A Rush Of Blood To The Head. But, as a starting point, I'd say this is an OK album!

We're at a surprisingly high #5 in the charts this week on the start of a surprisingly long 33 week run, with it having peaked at an even more surprisingly high #2 in its debut - it also managed a further 14 weeks on three more runs. The rest of the top five were the Steps best-of (a new entry starting a run of four weeks in the top two, which feels generous), Kylie, Andrea Bocelli and a Paul Weller live album (which I suspected I might like, but I knew very few tracks and the sound quality wasn't great) and the next highest new entry was Faith Hill (#6 - her highest ever chart placing here).

Wikipedia has a surprising amount of text (177 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's their debut album and expectations were high for this after a bidding war between labels. However, far too much of the entry refers to this - it belongs in the band's entry rather than here. They certainly put in the promo work once they'd been signed though, doing lots of telly, support and festival slots. Critically, the reviews were good without being great although there was a feeling they were possibly a bit more authentic than Coldplay or Travis - for me, Blender got it about right with "slightly hand-wringing lyrics, which, if not overwrought, are certainly pretty darned wrought. A striking debut, but you might hope for a slightly broader emotional palette on future albums". Commercially, it did better than you might expect across Europe, but only really got close to the top in Ireland where it got to #4 - despite a lot of effort over there, it only got to #129 in the US.

discogs.com tells us we're back in the land of fifty pence albums if you want a decent copy, but if you want the '22 180gm double vinyl reissue then it's going to set you back £170 - woah! Overall, this is a pretty well put together album - I feel if I listened to this a few more times I'd either really get into it or I'd get quickly bored with it, but unfortunately we'll never know which one!

28/10/01 - Nice

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And all at once I owned the earth and sky

Image
A new year to start the New Year - starting my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 30/12/01 : Swing When You're Winning -   Robbie Williams There's a reasonable argument I should reject this album, but it was such a surprising cultural moment that even I don't feel I can, so it means we're starting the year with one that "we" own. This is our fifth visit with Mr Williams - I'm determined not to enjoy it, but I also have to admit I'm not going to hate it nearly as much as I would like to.  You know what? This is perfectly fine. Completely inessential, but he's not doing anyone any harm. For the most part, it's classic Sinatra-or-thereabouts tracks which Robbie does a decent job with on the vocals (along with some slightly peculiar guests) and they've obviously got some decent musicians in to lay down the backing tracks. He rarely does anything wildly original with them but, most importantly, he doesn't ruin them either - I don't...
Read more

In your grace, I looked for some meaning - but I found none

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #3 :  Essex Honey - Blood Orange Dev Hynes’ fifth album as Blood Orange felt uniquely keyed into the fragmented, distracted headspace that comes after someone passes, in his case, his mother. Essex Honey’s restive nature was summed up in its painful opening lines, which you could read as the dying’s acceptance of death starkly contrasting the living’s ability to meet them on those terms: “In your grace, I looked for some meaning,” Hynes sings on Look at You. “But I found none, and I still search for a truth.” That search is wide-reaching: The Field refashions the Durutti Column’s Sing to Me as a racing hymnal made for the stereo of a Ford Escort. There are tough little Robert Rental-style post-punk gems in The Train (Kings Cross) and Countryside that bristle with frustration. Vivid Light is a plainly soulful duet with Zadie Smith; Life, featuring Tirzah’s unmistakable vocals, basks in languid, flute-dappled funk. T...
Read more

I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Image
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 ...
Read more