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Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 25/08/96 :  Free Peace Sweet -  Dodgy One I bought back in the day based purely on "Good Enough" - I seem to recall the rest of it was OK, if not exactly memorable.  But before I jog my memory, I have another "best of" to reject. It's Neil Diamond's turn this time with his "Ultimate Collection".  Well, when I say "ultimate" it's obviously been followed by an "essential" selection, his "all-time greatest hits" and his "50th anniversary" collection.  The man has produced some sort of compilation album every five years from 1968 to the present day which is, giving some horrendous context, my entire life.  So I feel I can safely reject this and move on to Dodgy. The title of which, I have to admit, I've only just realised is a pun.  I'm super speedy me, aren't I?  I think I just assumed it was all a collection of hippy-ish words and never ha...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 01/09/96 :  No Code -  Pearl Jam Our second visit with the Seattle slackers - I found out I really liked their debut when I was forced to revisit it (and have, of course, never been back since).  So I was looking forward to this one... And, well - it's an odd one.  I started off not liking it, but found it growing on me as I made my way through it.  I think part of the problem was that I thought it was very derivative, but I'm wondering if it's just that a lot of stuff that came after it derived from it - I'd be amazed if Kings Of Leon hadn't listened to this a couple of times (or a couple of thousand times).  It feels like it could be a grower - back in '96 I'd have given it the time to do so, but I'm not going to manage now, I'm afraid.  I'm going to file it under "interesting" and move on - and no, we've never owned it taking us to a pleasing third of 6/18. We're at th...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 19/08/22 :  The Alchemist's Euphoria - Kasabian I wouldn't say I'm the world's biggest Kasabian fan, but I've got some time for the way that they've stuck in there - it's 18 years since their debut album.  They also handled "the situation" with their ex-lead singer pretty well - beating up your fiancée is not cool, kids.  I can't say I was massively looking forward to this (despite the very cool title and cool cover too - I'm getting definite Rhythm and Stealth vibes) but I feel they've done enough over the years to warrant our first visit with the lads, so let's see what we've got here. Actually, it's really not bad at all - it's pretty derivative rawk, but if you're being derivative based upon some cool stuff, then there's no reason you can't be cool as well.  Did any of it stand out enough for me to actually remember it?  Well no, of course not -...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 08/09/96 :  Coming Up -  Suede When Suede first appeared with their debut album in 1992, they were massively praised by the music press which did make me slightly wary of them, but when I heard the album I had to admit I quite liked it.  But I really liked their follow up,  Dog Man Star , so I was looking forward to this one coming out - but I wasn't so happy with it and can't say I've revisited it in many a long year.  So it will be interesting to see what I think of it with the benefit of a bit of a break. And well - I'm still not sure where I am with this one.  It starts well with "Trash" and "Film Star" and, taken a track at a time, I'd struggle to say the quality really ever dips much lower throughout the album with "Beautiful Ones" and "The Chemistry Between Us" also standing out for me.  But as a whole album, I struggled to pay attention to it - but I'm not su...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 15/09/96 :  Mosely Shoals -  Ocean Colour Scene This is a fine mini-run we're on here - much more what I was looking for from 1996 than the Xmas horrors.  Although before we talk about that, we have to talk about this... At #7 this week, we have The Smurfs with their seminal classic "The Smurfs Go Pop!".  Seriously, who could forget "Mr Smurftastic" or "Smurfhillbilly Joe"?  Which you could probably guess were loosely based on "Boombastic" and "Cotton Eye Joe", but I suspect you'd struggle to guess the original "inspirations" for "The Noisy Smurf" ("It's Oh So Quiet"), "Smurfland" ("Living Next Door To Alice") or "Find The Smurf" ("Love Is All Around").  Part of me is intrigued to listen to this, but I have to own up to being scared that I might accidentally hear some of "Mr Blobby & The Smu...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 22/09/96 :  Older -  George Michael Woah - we've had a bit of a step up in quality recently, haven't we?  This is another album I know reasonably well and I was quite surprised that we didn't see it in the Rolling Stones exercise - Faith was his only entry there and I think there's a good argument this is a way better album. Just look at the evidence presented up front - "Jesus To A Child", "Fastlove" (which features some very fine sax work I'd never noticed before), "Older" and "Spinning The Wheel".  That's a very decent start to an album, isn't it?  There's an argument that the quality then dips to merely "really still very good" - until "Star People" and "You Have Been Loved" anyway.  It's an older and more world-weary George - he'd been through a lot in the years since his preceding album.  It's also bizarre to t...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 29/09/96 :  New Adventures In Hi-Fi -  R.E.M. This is our fourth visit with the dudes from Athens, Georgia - and t his album is the one after Monster (the one that people didn't like), which is the one after Automatic For The People (the one that everyone liked), which is the one after Out Of Time (the one with all the singles that people liked).   I t's fair to say  I'm a BIT of a R.E.M. fan, so this is  the first album in quite some time I didn't have to listen to (but I did anyway). Because it's the one after the one that people didn't like, a lot of people didn't bother listening to this - which, in my opinion, is a shame because there are some fine tracks on it and a lot of variety across them.  The first side is particularly high quality with personal favourites being "The Wake-up Bomb", "E-Bow The Letter" and "New Test Leper" but I think "Leave" is the t...