Back when no one could tell us apart and I'd turn down the music to parallel park

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 only Michael Jackson hanging on in there from last week - so let's check out them new entries...

Katseye (#2)
I heard rather a lot of Katseye earlier in the year because my youngest was a fan - and I had no desire to hear any more of them, but here we are. And it is both well done and really rather bad at the same time - let's just say I'm sure it hits the spot for those that want to be bludgeoned by it. 

The Script (#3)
They're still plugging away (they were formed in '01!) and they're still making the same kind of noise. And it's a noise I can handle, although I'd have to say none of the tracks here struck me as particularly memorable.

Jungle (#4)
They're still plugging away as well and doing alright for themselves because this is their fifth top ten album since their debut in '14 (all of which have the same cover design but in different colours). And this is pretty decent - it's a kinda summer soul/funk sound which has a light touch to it, but I feel it's probably taken an awful lot of work to make it sound so effortless. A great bbq soundtrack, I suspect.

The Kris Barras Band (#21)
Who? Ah, apparently he's an ex-MMA fighter and this is his fourth charting album since his debut in '16 - do we think this is likely to be ethereal indie-folk? Ah no, it's rawk - who'da thunk it? It's not something I need in my life, but I have to admit it's all put together well enough and has some decent guitar shredding on it.

Marilyn Manson (#27)
We've got all the oldies in this week, haven't we? He's only six months younger than me and he first charted in '94 - and I can't say he's really my thing with his tiresome attempts at controversy. On first listen, it's not too controversial but it is pretty tiresome - I actually don't mind the general sound, but there's just no variety across the album and it feels like he could just knock it all out in his sleep. Not for me, definitely.

Getdown Services (#75)
A relatively new band for a change and so I've obviously never heard of them and have no idea what to expect. And having listened to it, I'm still not sure what it is because it's odd on so many levels - stream of consciousness lyrics delivered in a deadpan style over some slow electro-pop backing. I don't think it's horrible (although plenty will), but I'm not sure I could go as far as recommending it.

The highest re-entry in the charts this week is The Weeknd at #42 (Hurry Up Tomorrow) and he's also back in at #85 (Starboy), followed by Ariana Grande at #51 (My Everything), #57 (Dangerous Woman), #58 (Positions) and #72 (Thank U Next) - can you guess which artists are on tour at the minute? I'm also going to give a shout out to Conan Grey (#63) - he's on tour soon, but in New Zealand, so I'm not sure that overly contributed to his success. Last week I said that The Reytons would be one and done and I'm sorry to say I was right, lads - it's harder to know how much enduring appeal Phoebe holds for the masses but I think she's got just enough to hang in there but not by much, so I'm going for #73.

Wikipedia tells us this is her third album and it "discusses grief, love, disillusion from fame, and is thematically centered around the death of Bridgers' father in 2022" (who appears on the album in the form of a phone message). There are some interesting people involved - Lucy Dacus & Julien Baker (her fellow boygenius members), Jack Antonoff (it's compulsory to include him in such things) and Bo Burnham (who she's currently in a relationship with). I love the fact that she organised the album's listening parties at 34 different planeteria (and I can assure you I've never used that word before) across Europe, North America and Oceania - that must have taken quite some organisation. Critically, of course, they all loved it and it's also done well commercially, getting to #2 in Germany, Ireland and the US and #1 in Australia and New Zealand.

discogs.com tells us that £13 will get you a CD or cassette copy or it's £30 for a standard vinyl copy but if you want the green glow in the dark splatter, the blue/green in translucent black (Far Side Of The Moon), the yellow, blue & pink swirl (Pluto glaciers) or the green/dark green marble (Europa ice) vinyl options then they're going to set you back £120-130 - someone had a lot of fun making those names up! I admired but didn't love the album although it was certainly interesting and she'd definitely put a lot of effort into it, so I think she probably deserves the album of the week award - however, I'm also going to give Jungle a shout-out for the album I'm probably most like to listen to again (particularly if we manage another bbq this year) and Getdown Services for the most intriguing album of the week (because I'm really not sure what I was supposed to do with it!).

14/07/26 - Decent enough