We've been stuck out here in the hallway for way, way too long

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

15/09/17 : Sleep Well Beast - The National

This is our third visit with The National - I liked their early stuff but feel they somewhat lost their way after that, although the two visits from '23 were certainly listenable enough. I don't believe I've ever listened to this one, so am intrigued as to what I make of it.

Yeah, this is pretty decent - it was the laid-back National sound that I like, but it has a load of interesting twiddly bits layered on top of it. It very much hit on first listen but also suggested that multiple listens would reveal more hidden jewels - and I would actually like to give it multiple listens (but obviously I'll report back in my end-of-year write-up that I've totally failed to manage to do so).

We're at a somewhat surprising #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a five week run - this has been their only album to make it to the top (so far, at least). The rest of the top five were Nothing But Thieves (a new entry from a band I wasn't aware I knew of, but I've reviewed two of their albums so far), Ed Sheeran, Rag'n'Bone Man and The Script, with three more new entries in the top ten for Neil Young (#6), Sparks (#7) and The Waterboys (#8).

Wikipedia tells us this is their seventh album and there's remarkably little else in there, except for a bizarre section on the marketing campaign which apparently involved creating a brand identity for the band, including a corporate standards manual. Apparently, this was done "as a bit of a joke", which feels like a definition of "joke" that I'm previously unaware of. It all went down well with the critics though with everyone being very nice about it, with plenty putting it on their year-end lists and it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. And commercially it also did way better than I expected globally, getting to #1 in Canada, Croatia, Ireland, Portugal and Spain and #2 in the US - maybe it was the marketing campaign that made the difference.

discogs.com tells us you're going to have to shell out six quid to get your hands on a decent CD copy, but if you want either the translucent blue or crystal clear double vinyl editions, then you're going to need to spend £77.25. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but this feels like one of the albums of the year so far which I can see I might well have listened to a lot back then if I'd been aware of it.

08/09/17 - Intensely forgettable
22/09/17 - More enjoyable than expected