By staying at #1 on the NACC 200 for a fourth straight week, Frankie Cosmos joins Ty Segall and Soccer Mommy in a three-way tie for the longest run on top so far this year. The impressive #1 run for their Sub Pop release, Vessel, is creating quite a log-jam up at the top of the chart with a number of other releases jockeying to become the next chart-topper. Wye Oak (who reach #1 on the NACC Non-Comm Chart this week) hold flat at #2, Unknown Mortal Orchestra rises 5-3, and Hop Along hangs tough at #4. It’s anyone’s guess which of these four albums might be #1 in a week.
And they aren’t the only contenders for the top next week. Storming the Top 10 this week, rising 57-5 is Dr. Dog. Neither doctors nor dogs comprise this five-piece from Philadelphia. Primary members Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman began playing music together in eighth grade. The band have released ten albums over the last 16 years. Critical Equation (their first release on Thirty Tigers) is one of two new albums in the Top 10 this week. The other, from King Tuff, climbs 13-7.
The NACC 200’s highest debut this week comes from singer, songwriter, actress, and model, Janelle Monáe. Her third LP, Dirty Computer, debuts at #54 on the chart this week. Monae got her start in music with her The Audition EP in 2003. Having caught the ear of Outkast’s Big Boi, who turned her music on to Sean Combs, Monáe signed to Bad Boy Records in 2006. She became a CoverGirl spokesperson in 2012 and along the way, has been nominated for six Grammys. In 2016 she appeared in two of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, Hidden Figures and the Oscar winner for Best Picture, Moonlight. Dirty Computer is now the second-best reviewed album of 2018 according to Metacritic.
The chart’s biggest climb this week comes from supergroup, A Perfect Circle, who rise 183-71. The band released three albums between 2000-2004 before going on a long hiatus. They loosely reformed in 2010 playing shows here and there over the years, but didn’t reform in earnest until last year. The current lineup of the band includes founding members Maynard James Keenan (also lead singer for Tool & Puscifer) and Billy Howerdel from Ashes Divide and now includes Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha, Matt McJunkins (Puscifer) & Jeff Friedl (Ashes Divide, Puscifer, The Beta Band). The band’s fourth LP, Eat The Elephant, is their first in fourteen years and just debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 this week.
Garnering the most Top 10 Adds this week are Northampton, MA quartet Speedy Ortiz. Led by Sadie Dupuis, the group are releasing their third LP (all on Carpark Records), Twerp Verse. This is actually the band’s second attempt at a third release. The album they had recorded before the 2018 election rang hollow for Dupuis after the results came in saying in a press release, “the songs on the [scrapped] album that were strictly personal or lovey dovey just didn’t mean anything to me anymore.” Twerp Verse easily landed at #1 on the NACC Adds Chart this week, collecting 31 more Top 10 Adds than the next most-added album and has already debuted at #66 on the NACC 200 this week.