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Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 13/06/71 : Aqualung - Jethro Tull Our second visit with JT and last time my verdict was "just odd" - which feels like something that will fit in nicely in '71, so let's see... Well, it is quite odd indeed. There's all sorts of stuff in here with rock, prog and folk contributing the main elements but you can never tell which one is going to take the forefront - but whatever's going on, you can tell these guys know their way round their instruments. Yes, there's too much flute on it but that's what you get with Ian Anderson and there's more than enough other stuff to make up for it. And,  for some unclear reason, I quite enjoyed it - I've absolutely no idea why this happened though, except that maybe it was a lot rockier than I was expecting. We're at #19 in the charts this week on their twelfth week of an impressive twenty week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its second week. The top...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 20/06/71 : Songs For Beginners - Graham Nash Having recently had our first visit with Stephen Stills, we get to see what Graham Nash was getting up to at the time - I'm guessing it's not going to be wildly different. Yeah, we're not wildly different - but, on first listen at least, this just has a bit more oomph and variety to it. It felt to be somewhere between John Lennon and Simon & Garfunkel with some pretty decent tracks on it - it 's probably not as musically accomplished as a lot of the albums we're heard this year, but he's put the effort into making decent tracks with interesting lyrics. And who can argue with that as an approach -  it feels that it would be a grower given multiple listens (which hasn't necessarily been the case for a lot of the "better" albums we've heard). All in all, I really quite liked it. We're at #13 in the charts this week on the start of a seven we...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 27/06/71 : Angel Delight - Fairport Convention Our first visit with FC but I'm at least aware of their general sound and I find it admirable rather than enjoyable - they just take the folky warbling a bit too far for my liking. But maybe a full album will cure me of that (spoiler alert - it won't). Yeah, that's still where we are. They're obviously good on their instruments and the singing is impressive with some very decent harmonies - but I just don't enjoy it. It's funny because I suspect someone like Kate Rusby could take any one of these songs and create a version I'd love without really doing all that much to it, but FC is just too warbly-folky for me. Having said that, the closest we've come to this sort of thing so far this year is Lindisfarne and this is a million percent better than that. We're at #8 in the charts this week with a new entry, which is surprisingly high given they only m...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 21/08/26 : Lost Weekend - Phoebe Bridgers  Our second visit with Ms Bridgers and last time I said I liked the general sound, but sometimes found it a bit ethereal - I'll be very surprised if things are any different here. Yeah - that's exactly where we are. It's a well put together offering with a lot of interesting noises on it, but sometimes she just tries a bit too hard to be not quite there. Maybe given a load more listens it would be a grower, but I'm afraid that's just not going to happen - I'm also not entirely sure who's loving this so much (apart from the critics - they're obviously going to go crazy for it). But plenty are loving it because we're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week - our tenth consecutive new entry at the top and six of them have been from women. The rest of the top five is new entry heavy as well with Katseye, The Script and Jungle all being new, with ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 04/07/71 : Love Story Original Soundtrack - Francis Lai This one is close to being rejected but it seems to be mostly original tracks so let's give it a go - I'm expecting a load of wishy-washy instrumentals (so obviously I can't wait) Hmmm - well, they are instrumentals (apart from some odd wailing on one of them) but they're not actually not all that wishy-washy. That doesn't mean they're great but they do have the odd catchy bit in them - you'd recognise the main "Theme From Love Story" motif and I have to admit it's a well put together couple of bars. And Francis obviously realised that, because he used it a LOT throughout the album - it's clearly used in three of the tracks (often repeated multiple times played on different instruments) and there are variations of it in two or three others. A lot of the other tracks use repetition as well, so this album basically makes a lot of not...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 11/07/71 : Osibisa -  Osibisa Our first ever mention for Osibisa and I must confess I've never heard of them, which is a shocking state of affairs because they've been going since '69 and have released 16 studio (and, amusingly, 25 compilation) albums - let me remedy my ignorance immediately! This is an interesting one - it wouldn't surprise me if it's the earliest "African" album we've seen. I use quotes because they were all based in London and half of them were actually Caribbean, but it has a strong African vibe to the whole thing. I can't say I loved it but it pootled along nicely and does feature some very  fine guitar playing, so it was pleasant enough - unlike the creatures on the album cover. We're at a surprisingly high #11 on the last week of a seven week run with this being as high as it got, which makes me wonder why it dropped out of the chart in the following week. The top fi...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 18/07/71 : Symphonies For The Seventies - Waldo De Los Rios Yes, there's an argument this should be ignored because it's an album of "covers" but it's just too intriguing to pass by... Well, it sounded intriguing in theory because it's modern reworkings of classical music - but in practice, it was really pretty close to musical wallpaper. But it was pretty well done musical wallpaper which at least had a bit of oomph to it, so it left more of an impression than it might otherwise have done. I'm also intrigued because I didn't know any of the tracks - I suspect I'd either have been more or less impressed with it if I had known them, but we'll never know which. We're at #11 in the charts this week on his thirteenth week of a fourteen week run with it having peaked at #6 in its second, third, fourth and sixth weeks - how very peculiar! The top five this week were  Simon & Garfunkel , P...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 14/08/26 : A Love Letter To A Broken Town - The Reytons  Our second visit with The Reytons - last time I quite liked them but thought they were maybe a bit too similar to The Arctic Monkeys. So let's see if they're still in that general vicinity... Yeah, it's still pretty AM-ish, but it's definitely early AM so that's the best place to be - and it also brings Sam Fender to mind, which isn't anything to be sniffed at. I quite liked it on first listen and seems like it would be a grower - but it definitely feels like they'd be a great band live (complete with an absolutely devoted set of fans) We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week - their second #1 and their fourth top five album. The rest of top five are Michael Jackson,  Olivia Rodrigo , Ariana Grande and Flo (a new entry) - so let's start our relatively lengthy rundown of the new entries there. Flo (#5) That 90s female-lead...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 25/07/71 : The Yes Album - Yes It feels like '71 wouldn't be complete without a bit more Yes - I'd love to tell you which visit this is, but unfortunately searching the blog for their name returns quite a few false positives, so I'm just going to guess it's our third visit. And I'm expecting it to be well done, but not particularly enjoyable. Hmmm. It is well done in terms of musicianship, but it seems to suffer from ELP syndrome in that everyone has to be given a go to do their particular thing which means you get all sorts of weird sections when you're not expecting them (a Spanish flamenco-style guitar instrumental, anyone?) and consequently it doesn't really hang together as an album. However, I would say none of it is particularly unenjoyable and some of the Jon Anderson focussed stuff is pretty decent, but it's not something I'll be rushing back to. We're at a relatively high #18 in...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 01/08/71 : Songs Of Love And Hate - Leonard Cohen Our second visit with cheery old Lenny - I tend to like his songs without liking the way he sings them, but let's see what we've got here. Well, if you like songs like "American Pie" or "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" which go on for hours and have a million verses which make no sense at all, then boy have I got a treat for you here! Seven of the eight tracks are over five minutes long and I'm sure Leonard had some clue what some of the lyrics meant, but they're certainly not transparent on first listen. A whole album of it is certainly too much, particularly if you're going in blind - but yet...  ...it's got "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Joan Of Arc" on it, both of which are very fine tracks (although I prefer Jennifer Warnes's versions of both - and before you call me a heathen, even Leonard has said he that he prefe...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 08/08/71 : The Magnificent 7 - The Supremes & The Four Tops Part of me feels I should reject this because it's an album of covers - but it's an album of covers from The Supremes & The Four Tops recording together, so it feels like it could be pretty special. And it's got to be better than the Diana Ross albums we've had this year, hasn't it? Well, it might be an album of covers, but I knew remarkably few of them - "River Deep, Mountain High" and "Everyday People" obviously and there were a couple of others that rang a few bells, but mostly it was all new to me. And whilst it certainly didn't made the level of pretty special, it was all perfectly fine and definitely considerably better produced than Diana's offerings - but it was also all very forgettable. We're at #24 in the charts this week on their last week of a seven week run, with it having peaked at #6 in its second ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 15/08/71 : Stephen Stills 2 - Stephen Stills Crosby, Stills and Nash have popped up on all sorts of albums over the years, but this is the first time we've ever met one of them in a solo capacity - and I'm kinda looking forward to it because I feel it's going to be different from most of what we've seen this year. Yeah, I didn't mind this - I think I'd struggle to say any of the songs are exactly top-notch, but none of them are dreadful, he's got a nice enough voice and there's some very fine guitar playing going on. If I had to quibble, I'd say t he production isn't quite as clean as it could be in places, which is a bit of a shame because it's distracting at times - but generally  it passes by pleasantly enough.  James Taylor  is the only thing we've had this year which is anything close to this and this just has more oomph to it, which was appreciated. We're at #22 in the chart...