You're telling me about this, I tell you about about that

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

12/05/17 : For Crying Out Loud - Kasabian


Our fifth visit with Kasabian - who expected that? It's fair to say my expectations are not high for this period Kasabian, but I'm happy to give it a go...

Hmmm - I guess it's OK if you like that general Kasabian sound, but just not quite as good as their best stuff. It's all performed well enough though and does have a lovely clean production to it, so I guess it might be a grower - but there's no danger of me giving it a chance. I've no idea what they were thinking with the album cover though - it screams Year 8 PowerPoint presentation to me.

We're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a surprisingly lengthy 23 week run - I'm somewhat amazed to see they've have SEVEN #1 albums, so we can expect to see them again at some point. The rest of the top five were Ed Sheeran, Rag'n'Bone Man, Blondie (a new entry) and Gorillaz and the next highest new entry is Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (#8).

Wikipedia tells us it's their sixth album and the last to feature Tom Meighan after he left the group under a cloud. There is a section on the cover art, with the designer telling us he wanted to "challenge how I previously approached art direction, through the deconstruction of the graphic design tools and their known formulas" - and there was me thinking it was a last minute rush-job. Critically, the views were mixed with NME declaring there were "massive tunes that make an instant impact" whilst The Quietus said it was "pedestrian, predictable, and so utterly, utterly bland" (which feels somewhat harsh to me). Commercially, it did better than I expected globally, making the top 20 in quite a few European countries including #7 in Italy and #2 in Ireland. It's also notable for ending Ed Sheeran's nine week reign at #1, so at least it did something useful.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for three quid but if you want the limited edition (of only fifty) UNICEF blue vinyl version then it's going to set you back a massive £850, making this the most expensive album of the year so far. There's no danger of me shelling out even three quid on it, but this album feels like something the fans will have gone for, without there being any danger of creating any new fans. 

19/05/17 - Yeah, I liked this

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