On horseback, I'd rather be here

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

03/02/17 : Return To Ommadawn - Mike Oldfield


Our third visit with Mike and it's fair to say I've not been all that impressed with our previous visits - I just don't see the point to Tubular Bells and, considering the fact that this is two twenty-plus minute tracks, I believe this will be in a similar vein, which doesn't fill me with confidence.

Ah yes - this is very much in the same vein with a pretty decent musical hook which he then plays around with to greater and lesser effects. However, whilst I'm not going to get all gushy about this, I do have to admit that he's less wedded to the hook here than he is on Tubular Bells and he's also less concerned about doing weird stuff obviously different from the hook - both of which are to the album's credit. It also some lovely clear production on it - it sounded absolutely gorgeous in places. So it was definitely better than expected, but there's no danger of me ever revisiting it. 

We're at #4 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a very brief three week run, with this, unsurprisingly, being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Pete Tong & Heritage Orchestra (I bet they were surprised by that), La La Land, Little Mix and The XX with the highest new entry being Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes (#7). 

Wikipedia tells us this is his 26th and final album - he announced his retirement in '23. Amusingly, it tells us that his '14 album, Man On The Rocks, was a standard album (with actual songs and such nonsense) and afterwards he went on social media to ask his fans what they wanted for his next album - and they replied "not that!". So he went back to what they wanted and, despite my general feelings about the man's output, I think it's nice he ended with the sort of thing that made him famous. 

It's fair to say Mike is quite the multi-instrumentalist with him playing nine types of stringed instruments, seven types of keyboards, various drums, penny whistles and a glockenspiel on this - he's also put out a 5.1 surround sound mix for it, so he's certainly put the work in here. Critically, it received "generally favourable" reviews and commercially, it went down very well in Europe, getting to #4 in Hungary as well as here, #3 in Germany, #2 in Czechia and #1 in Spain.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD for £12, but if you want the 180gm vinyl (complete with poster!) then it's going to set you back £120. Which, it probably won't surprise you to hear, I can resist - but I have to admit found myself feeling a lot warmer about this than I expected, particularly when I read it was his final album.

03/02/17 - Does what it's supposed to do well

  

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