Broadcasting reckless confessions, we will all beg for extinction

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts (very late - I'm still a week behind!)

03/07/26 : The Wow! Signal - Muse 

Our sixth visit with the never knowingly understated boys from Devon - I'll be amazed if this isn't "well done but more of the same".

Well, it's certainly in a similar vein, although it seems like they're trying to do a few slightly different things - but don't worry, they're certainly not different enough to frighten the horses. One thing that is different is the presence of Ellie Goulding on "Hush" (their first ever guest vocalist) - I'd say it works better than I was expecting. I didn't mind this all but can't claim I love it - it doesn't feel like it's going to earn them any new fans, but I also don't think it will lose them any existing ones.

Of course, I could be basing that analysis on us being at #1 in the charts this week with a new entry! The rest of the top five are Olivia Rodrigo, Michael Jackson, Harry Styles and Olivia Dean and we have surprisingly few new entries to consider this week. 

The Pretty Reckless (#6)
I've met this lot a couple of times on my travels and quite liked them, but this didn't quite hit the spot - it was just all a bit bland and generic.

Beth Orton (#85)
I liked Beth's earlier stuff but I'm not aware of listening to anything she's done in the past twenty years or so, except for checking her out live at Glastonbury - which unfortunately wasn't my favourite set of the day. But I actually quite liked this - her voice has certainly changed over the years, but it's used well here on some decent songs which certainly hark back to her earlier stuff.

KWN (#93)
I think this is our first ever mention of KWN but for some reason the blog search gets very confused by TLAs and throws up a load of false positives, so I'm unable to check. She's got an interesting sound though even if it's not exactly my sort of thing - it's slow, melodic hip-hop. I also have a slight suspicion she might be gay...

To make up for the lack of new entries, we do have some interesting re-entries - Metallica's Reload is back (#39) having last been seen in '98 and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade is back (#53) for its eighth run in the chart, having first been seen in '06. Last week I said that Myles Smith would be at #37 and whilst #17 isn't all that close, I'm taking it as a win because he really could have ended up anywhere. I'm running so late with my updates that I could cheat and get Muse suspiciously close, but I promise I've not looked when I go for #12. And I know we've given up on Taylor stats, but given she got married this week, I'm somewhat surprised that she's only got the one album in the chart this week all the way down at #61.

Wikipedia tells us this is their tenth album and the lyrics "explore themes of cosmic mystery, influenced by Matt Bellamy's split from the model Elle Evans" - and I have admit I'm struggling to understand the exact connection between the two factors there. They have also changed things up here by using a producer, having self-produced their last couple of albums - Dan Lancaster got the job and it sounds like it was tricky to start with, but worked well in the end. Amusingly, the entry lists all members of the Crouch End Festival Chorus and London Metropolitan Orchestra - which number somewhere in the region of 100! Critically, the views are pretty much "it's Muse being Muse, innit?" with Rolling Stone amusingly pointing out that things would "be OK if Muse kept things a little less intense. Of course, if they did, they wouldn't be Muse". You have to admit there are plenty of people out there that like them though because it's got to #1 in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, The Netherlands, France, Norway and Switzerland - only #41 in the US though.

discogs.com surprises me by telling me that you drop as little as £14 on this - but that's a digisleeve version, which is just a posh word for envelope. If you want to go over the top though, there are (obviously) plenty of options available to you - you can spend £85 on a red & black swirl vinyl, £95 on a Zoetrope edition, £99 on a translucent red & grey galaxy vinyl, £110 on a milky clear vinyl (which sounds disgusting) or £175 on a space edition (and who knows what that is!?!). I didn't mind Muse's offering this week, but I don't really see it's really offering anything new for fans or the neutrals (even if I accept they've tried a bit), so I'm giving the album of the week to Beth Orton, who will undoubtedly disappear entirely next week - but she deserves better. I'm also going to give KWN a name-check for doing something interesting, even if it's not really aimed at me.

26/06/06 - Pretty average