A muffled battle cry across the kitchen table - a baffling contretemps that shakes the day unstable

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

1702/17 : Little Fictions - Elbow


For a band that have had four #1 albums and eight top ten albums, it's somewhat surprising that this is only our second visit with the lads - I've also seen them live a couple of times and they don't make the grade either! I have listened to this though - I remember quite liking it, but also remember it not being exactly essential (particularly within the context of Elbow having already made a load of great tracks). 

Yeah, I think that's fair enough, but I also feel the need to say the tracks on this are still pretty decent - particularly "Magnificent (She Says)" which is a fine opening track. I'm still not convinced I'd describe it as essential, but it's certainly worth a listen or two.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on their second week of a twelve week run with it having debuted at #1 in its debut week. The rest of the top five were Rag'n'Bone Man, Thunder (a new entry), Nines (a new entry) and the La La Land soundtrack, with the next highest new entry being Devlin (#16) who is an English rapper who I don't remember in the slightest.

Wikipedia tells us this is their seventh album and their first without Richard Jupp, their original drummer, who left the band the previous year - and that's pretty much it for any news of note. Critically, the album was well received with several people noting a more mature sound - I'm going to take their word for it because I don't really remember anything about either of the two preceding albums. Commercially, there was still plenty of people out there interested in their output with it getting to #3 in Belgium and #1 in The Netherlands and Ireland - it only got to #172 in the US though. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD copy for as little as a couple of quid, but if you want the deluxe box set (which has both the album and the CD in it, but who needs that?) then it's going to set you back £70. I'd say I enjoyed this more than I was expecting to - Elbow's first four albums are all excellent (and enjoyably different) and I have never paid much attention to anything else they've done, but maybe I should take this out for another spin. 

24/02/17 - Perfectly "nice"

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