Capricious buyers

It’s tough out there in the crazy world of pop. Two years ago The Feeling were the most played act on British radio. Their debut album, Twelve Stops and Home — almost certainly the only album in history to be named after a late-night Tube journey from Leicester Square to Bounds Green — sold 1.5 million copies and inspired several other bands to start playing plinky-plink 1970s pop. In turn, as previously discussed here, this has provoked Radio One into announcing that Rock Is So Over and shifting its entire daytime programming policy in a plinky-plinky popward direction. So you might have thought that a second album by these pioneers would be greeted with foaming adoration by the pop-loving masses, and that Asda and Tesco, our new favourite record shops, would sell out in seconds. Not a bit of it. The current single was at 53 last week, the album at number 30.