Compare and contrast

Girls Aloud - "I Think We're Alone Now" (mp3 on POPtastic!), from their new Greatest Hits with incredibly shoddy cover.
The Pipettes - "I Think We're Alone Now" (mp3 on Girlpants) from earlier this year.

Not bad for a list

Drowned in Sound's Top 66 albums since 2000, the year that they begun (and I can remember almost that far back, when they let any loser write for them...)

It's interesting anyway, but most complaints about it are pretty much overridden by the choice of Vespertine as number one, just as I'm wishing that I hadn't taken so long to discover it - beautiful and sensual and everything that Kid A and Amnesiac weren't quite plus more besides.

Anyone else annoyed at missing Guillemots yesterday?

You can watch their set with BBC Concert Orchestra here at least. Lots of other Electric Proms things available here, including the whole set (and so whole new album) of Damon Albarn's new band. I was actually at that one, so more soon.
On the Guillemots one, if you only have time for one song it's worth skipping to 15 minutes in for "Bad Boyfriend". Words fail me.

Chartsengrafs - I fell in love with Uranus

Sunday gone: My Chemical Romance make it two weeks at 1 without much difficulty. Bob Sinclar continues his determined climb, making it as far as 3, Girls Aloud pull a 5 on downloads out of nowhere, leaving me briefly wondering if they were going to actually fall down the chart on physical release. That's already better than any single off Chemistry and "Wake Me Up", for those noting similarities.
Meat Loaf (if only he started singing about his own songs, we could have Meta Loaf) suffers the inevitable late week fall but still lands at 6, his best since ten years ago. Everyhit tells me that one of his hits went by the over-lengthy title "Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are" which links him nicely to our current number one single's genre as well as to our current number one album and its soundalike single. James Morrison single reaches 8, still sounds like KT Tunstall knockoff. The Ordinary Boys are pushing their reality TV fame for all it's worth at 10 - their new album includes not only their rereleased Lady Sovereign remix but also "Boys Will Be Boys", i.e. the lead single from their last album.
Jamie T is 13, just ahead of Beyonce's downloads. Amy Winehouse makes the top twenty with hers, too.
Pet Shop Boys suffer a non-top twenty place for the time since "Was It Worth It?" as "Numb" only makes 23 - should have stopped at two singles like last time, I guess. The Holloways are at 30. I guess even Fratellis fans have to draw the line somewhere. Rogue Traders (33, full, oops) and Cassie (38, downloads) round out the new entries in the forty.

The albums has one last hella boring week, with The Killers still at 1.




Sunday coming: McFly, who obviously have some kind of aversion to downloads, have enough fans left who haven't defected to Panic! At The Disco to take them to number 1 again. Girls Aloud look likely for their fifth 2 although Fedde Le Grand might push them close. Beyonce will have to settle for 5 and I take back what I said about Fratellis fans earlier as The View are heading top 10.
Amy Winehouse isn't doing much on physical sales and will only be up a couple from last week (this week? whatever), while The Magic Numbers might be a little disappointed with their fortunes too. Serves them right for ruining Jonathon Ross' Japanorama. The Long Blondes aren't going to be stars after all, even now they have finally got really good, while The Kooks have finally released one dull single too many to get any higher than 20 or so. The Raconteurs and a rather folorn looking Rihanna should also get top forty places.

The album chart looked like finally being a close run thing this week, but Meat Loaf's good sales and My Chemical Romance's very fine sales (more than 100K by the end of the week for sure) are no match for Robbie Williams, even a Robbie Williams who doesn't appear to know what he's doing any longer. Rod Stewart and John Legend are also going to clutter up the top and an outside top ten place doesn't look good for the aforementioned Ordinary Boys album.

Bloc Party - A Weekend In The City

Details just coming out about this one - it's out on 5th February next year, so just about sooner than two years after Silent Alarm, and has a tracklisting a bit (or a lot) like this:

• Song For Clay (Disappear Here)
• Hunting For Witches
• Waiting For the 7.18
• The Prayer
• Uniform
• On
• Where Is Home?
• Kreuzberg
• I Still Remember
• Sunday
• SRXT

"The Prayer" is the single and it's apparently all about life in the city.

Chartsengrafs - More than any laws allow

Sunday gone: Ladies and gentlemen, behold your new number one single:

Hooray! Almost exactly a year on from "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" and My Chemical Romance's preposterous, brilliant "Welcome To The Black Parade" is the first time since that a song's ability to actually get to number one has come as such a pleasant surprise - they're not on an indie label and have reams of press coverage of course, but still. A look at the airplay chart shows that they've achieved it with less radio play than the last Kooks single is still getting, incedentally. Razorlight and Scissor Sisters are 2 and 3, Bob Sinclar and P Diddy swap round to be 4 and 5 and the next biggest new entry is Beatfreakz at 7, who ignored demands to withdraw the single because of their rip-off of the Superman logo.
Laid back? James Morrison and Corinne Bailey Rae will give you laid back at 20 on downloads and 32 on physcials; the smell of repetition really is on Hot Chip as "Over And Over"'s rerelease reaches 27; Placebo and Alison Mosshart are S-E-X-I-N-G at 35; like a monkey with a miniature cymbal (but don't ask how) The Ordinary Boys poke casio at 36 and Badly Drawn Boy has started thinking about what he has to do to get anyone to like him again at 38.
Goo Goo Dolls and Meat Loaf lurk outside the top forty on downloads and Blazin' Squad (remember them?) are 54.

In the albums it's much the same as last week with The Killers at number one and only Trivium entering the top 10 (at 7). Most notable lower down is Sting's lute album at 24, which according to Metro is "rubbing shoulders with the likes of Razorlight and Scissor Sisters". Well, apart from the twenty place difference.




Sunday coming: Week 2 at number one is to come for our emo overlords, probably selling more than last weeks 33,000. Biggest new entry will be Meat Loaf and Marion Raven at 5 or so and James Morrison and The Ordinary Boys are likely to follow them into the top 10. Pet Shop Boys look set to keep their almost 100% top 20 record with "Numb". Jamie T is heading top 20 too - really?
Lower down, The Rifles might just make the top 40, Goo Goo Dolls releasing thier new single as a double A side with their Ronan Keating cover "Iris" will only be enough to scrape in, and The Holloways continue to bring N7 into disrepute.
Next week there will be a much needed clearout near the top as we have a whole lot of download entries coming this Sunday: The Kooks, Rihanna, Cassie, Girls Aloud, Beyonce and, topping the lot in unlikely fashion, Amy Winehouse. Well, she'll get a nice new platform to slag people off from. Should be fun.

In the albums nothing comes close to threatening The Killers, with Badly Drawn Boy and P Diddy heading for middling entries.

'Not bad for a 30-second wrestler's intro piece'

Stylus Singles Jukebox returns! Your bonus thoughts:

Papa Roach go vaguely emo to catchy but still rubbish effect [3]
Akon turns out his worst song yet and Eminem decides to show up for some reason [4]
and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness are called I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. And have a lovely dreamy song that sounds a bit like The Cure, possibly. [7]

The Knife at Kentish Town Forum (14/10/06)

This isn't much like ordinary gigs. Aside from occasionally playing kettle drums with fluorescent orange sticks, it's difficult to work out what Olof Dreijer is actually doing for much of the time, and with his sister Karin, the only other onstage, only singing it's clearly not about reproducing their records live. Both are, of course, wearing balaclavas and orange facepaint, often then only part visible in the shadows.

I didn't see their show earlier this year at the Scala but its difficult to imagine how much of the show would have worked on a smaller stage - the size of the many, brilliant projections and, in fact, a certain distance from the audience being key factors in the experience tonight. After a couple of songs of elaborate images on the big screen behind them, all of a sudden a thick white line is drawn on the screen and simultaneously appears in the air in front of the stage. It's only after a few more lines are drawn that it becomes clear that they are in fact playing behind a second, translucent screen. It's a great trick but works beyond the intial "what is that?" factor; the impression that they are caged and that Karin is singing through a barrier matches up with the strained, distorted nature of many of the Silent Shout vocals. Aside from the likes of "Forest Families", though, it's the danciest ones which work best - their first album's "Kino", where artwork is abandoned for manically flashing lights, sounds fantastic. "Heartbeats" is actually slightly, strangely, underwhelming. It's played in a different, barer form that loses most of its bounce, though it would be difficult to really fuck up a song as great as that.

More extra tricks, like distorted faces either side of the main screen, are gradually revealed and the length of time they wait before using their surround sound makes it all the more startling when things start happening directly overhead too. It's hard not to admire such a well put together show, and it's only very occasionally that it feels cold or distant. A shame there's no "One Hit", though...

Born In Great Britain

So I've acquired both these two albums recently (the latter particularly for review purposes only) and was giving them a first listen when something jumped out. Born In The U.K., after its brief talky intro, starts for real with a blast of the first few notes of "Land Of Hope And Glory". And So This Is Great Britain? starts with... yes, a blast of the first few notes of "Land Of Hope And Glory". And they come out within a week of each other. It would be hilarious even if it wasn't kind of a lame idea for either one of them to begin with.

Chartsengrafs - The saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned

Sunday gone: Scissor Sisters are gone (well, to 2/3 in singles/albums), swept aside by a wave of stadium rock. Yes, The Killers take the album top spot with almost as enormous numbers as Ta Dah did, and Razorlight really are singles number one single with "America". I could at least say ha, they barely sold 30,000 but that's kind of normal now I suppose. Sigh. This brings nu-Britpop/haircut indie (someone had better give this a proper name before it's done) to a total number one tally of three, so it's basically only its own Oasis short of equalling Britpop's.
Scott Mills David Hasselhoff gets a number 3 single - imagine if they did charts for 'hilarious' photoshopped emails! - and P Diddy, Nicole Scherzinger, Bob Sinclar and Cutee B squeeze into 4 and 5.
Snow Patrol go up a place once again to 16 and it doesn't look like "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" will get much a look in on release at this rate.
My Chemical Romance are 23 on downloads and Bedouin Soundclash stall at 24 on full release. I've never come across Nerina Pallot's "Sophia" but it's at 32, and Trivium squeeze just into the top forty for the first time with "Anthem (We Are The Fire)", which sounds horrifying. The usual download effects manage to get previous singles by Lily Allen, Razorlight and Paolo Nutini all into the top forty, and what use that is to anyone I'm not sure.

Sunday coming: Well, it's a bit late in the week for this to be worth much, but essentially you're looking at the same as last week. Except... last I heard My Chemical Romance were only 400 sales behind Razorlight. Now there's something to root for! Unless you're of the opinion that they're just as bad, in which case you're wrong. Very wrong.

This isn't because I'm not in it

The BT Digital Music Awards list of top 50 blogs makes for interesting reading, if largely in the bad sense that their definition of a blog seems to be anyone who fancied being one:

1. Some guy on The Streets' website - Just about is, though it requires navigation of a ton of Flash to get there and find out
2. Mew's website journal - Well, barely. Weren't these UK awards anyway?
3. David Gilmour - ??? Disappointingly it turns out to be by 'features editor'
4. a James Blunt forum - This is really just getting silly
5. Styleslut - hooray! A non band site blog, on blogger and everything, and we're only at number 5. Quite a funny one too.

You know, I might just review the lot next.

Amusing referral search of the week

"the long blondes can't sing"

Chartsengrafs - Nothing on the radio that means that much to me

Your last Chartsengrafs was absent due to a week's silence in commemoration of The Bluetones' "My Neighbour's House" reaching 68 and becoming their first ever proper single to miss the top 40. Aww. Joking aside, not that much happened at the top that week anyway with continued Scissor Sisters dominance, The Killers at 2 and not a lot else. On to normal, only slightly outdated business...



Sunday gone: Scissor Sisters stay on top of both singles and albums, making it four and two weeks respectively now. Lil' Chris achieves a number 3, which I certainly didn't see coming. Reckon anyone from Ice T's Rap School will manage as much? Evanescence at 4 comes as just slightly less of a shock, though seems no less incongruous these days, and Lily Allen only reaches 6 as everyone goes and buys the album instead. No such problem for Pussycat Dolls (7), who appear guarenteed a top ten place for every single track off theirs at this rate. What is this High School Musical thing at 9? I had never heard of it before seeing the chart although I now discover it's a fairly big deal. I must be too old. Shakira is still in the top 10.
Razorlight go 15 on downloads. 15. On downloads. Snow Patrol are at 17 so, er, haven't been deleted after all (well, not that the question was whether Snow Patrol themselves would be deleted anyway, obviously) and Paolo Nutini at 20 would be a failure if it wasn't for the fact that his album is back into the top ten. Its TV advert resorts to quotes from 'The Metro' and The Sun for positive coverage.
Bob Sinclar seems everpresent this year and is now 21 with one Cutee B and some downloads. The combined forces of P Diddy And The Singing One Out Of Pussycat Dolls are just about enough to see off James Dean Bradfield for 30, even on downloads. Dirty Pretty Things (34), LeToya (35) and US5 (38, Top ten for the single! Top ten for the album!) bring up the rear.
Well, apart from the lower down still, particularly full of big names this week. Not so much for The Pipettes (46, doing the "Bastardo" video but not as well) but for Bryian McFadden AND LeAnn Rimes, who are 48 on full release. He's had a nervous breakdown as a result, apparently. And for Simply Red at 57 missing the top forty for the first time in who knows how long.





Sunday coming: What the fuck, Britain? I saw Razorlight supporting Hope Of The States (heh) almost exactly three years ago and thought that they were a decent, if unoriginal band who put on a good show but weren't going anywhere much. They went on to release a decent, if unoriginal first album and eventually managed to go somewhere, seemingly by force of talking themselves up alone. Since then, though, they have become more pompous and useless by the day. Much, much more pompous and useless, in the case of "America" which is, of course, probably going to be number one. Makes The Killers sweeping aside all others in the album chart look all the brighter a prospect in comparison.
Other singles chart action will involve P Diddy (I thought he wasn't allowed to call himself that here?) and Bob Sinclar charging the top 10, David Hasselhoff and My Chemical Romance's downloads storming the top 20 and Bedouin Soundclash bumping into the top 30.
In the albums Evanescence are heading for 2 but the more interesting news is Beck managing to get himself banned completely, Ikara Colt style, by giving away a 'free gift' with the album. Is that an acknowledgement that stickers to make your own cover art with are way cooler than bonus DVDs or any of the things which are allowed? Anyway, here's my attempt.

More from your all Guillemots, all London news service

Found out from teletext today: There's a series of acoustic gigs (called the Little Noise Sessions) by fairly big names next month. They're going to be at the Union Chapel in Islington, a quite popular venue which ran into trouble last year but is now back to strength. Ticket prices are a little steep but that's because it's for charity. And among some slightly dodgy lineup choices (well, Jo Whiley is involved...) there are some who should make for excellent gigs. Although I wish Bat For Lashes and Jamie T were swapped.

20/11: The Kooks, Plan B, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
21/11: Paolo Nutini, M Craft
22/11: Guillemots, Mystery Jets, Jamie T
23/11: The Fratellis, The View, Mohair
24/11: Mika, Bat For Lashes
27/11: James Morrison, Lily Allen

Oh, and Guillemots are playing Brixton Academy in February too, which is going to be weird. I didn't think that they were doing quite that well yet.

It's name sounds a bit like a DS game or something

Scissor Sisters' Ta Dah and The Killers' Sam's Town are big selling albums. The first sold 288,000 or so copies in its first week and the latter is heading for roughly the same.
And among a few other things they have in common, they both come in the same really weird cases. A bit of searching and internet help and I find out that these are Super Jewel Boxes!! They're not really new, because I have a My Computer album from 2002 with the same design (though slightly smaller hinge bits) but they definitely haven't got quite such a massive push before. I can't really see much advantage (yeah, you can have writing on the other two spines, but who ever looks at those anyway?? And I won't be able to replace broken bits with jewel cases from free CDs anymore. At least til those all change over too) but I guess it's the future.

New U2 best of

What is the point? Surely only a matter of time before they release two best ofs in a row and desist with the bother of actual new albums now.

More pleasingly, Brakes have finished their second album, The Beatific Visions, and will be releasing it next month (Nov 6th to be precise). They describe it as '28.9 minutes of literate country-punk'.
And it includes "Porcupine Or Pineapple"!

'Oh, the waves of cheap keytar'

...and somehow it's already a week later and here's another Jukebox. Oops. I can't even offer you anything in the way of bonus thoughts, beyond how enjoyable Shana Tesh's utterly disposable "Boum Boum Boum" is. [7]