Islands Overtake Neko Case For #1

Islands' highly anticipated Return To The Sea debut moves up two places to capture the coveted #1 spot from Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings The Flood on this week's Top 50 chart.Case's album sits at #2, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones bounces up a spot to #3, and Pink Mountaintops' Axis Of Evol drops two places to #4. The Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics rockets up 12 spots to grab #5. This is the third consecutive top five placing from the Oklahoma band, as The Soft Bulletin peaked at #4 twice in August 1999 and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots hit #1 for two straight weeks in August 2002. Run Chico Run's Slow Action jumps five spots to #6, while Mogwai's Mr. Beast slips down a notch to #7. Built To Spill's You In Reverse moves up 10 spots to #8, while the upward movement of Lovely Feathers' Hind Hind Legs dwarfs almost everyone by catapulting 21 places to #9 in its second week on the chart. They Shoot Horses Don't They?'s Boo Hoo Hoo Boo slips to #10.

Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere entered the chart at #31 to claim the Chart Sizzler Award for the week. That's one of the lowest top debuts for a good six months. Gnarls Barkley, the collaborative project of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, placed at #6 on CFUV (Victoria), #8 on CJSR (Alberta), #15 on CFCR (Saskatoon) and #16 on CFRU (Guelph) and CITR (UBC). The runner-up debut of the week is Concretes' In Colour at #32. Another newbie, Black Angels' Passover, sits right behind them at #33.

Over in specialty chart land, there are three new #1 albums, including two #1 debuts. Murs And 9th Wonder's Murray's Revenge is the new #1 on the Hip-Hop chart. The self-titled release by Birdy Nam Nam enters the Electronic chart at #1. The third new #1 is found on the Metal/Punk top 10, where Amorphis' Eclipse jumps two places. Cesaria Evora's Rogamar is the queen of the World/Folk chart for a second week and William Parker's Long Hidden: The Olmec Series remains at #1 on the Jazz/Blues chart.

Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane's At Carnegie Hall re-enters the Jazz/Blues chart, bringing its total number of weeks there to 18. The only two other albums to remain on a specialty chart for longer were Dimmu Borgir's Death Cult Armageddon, which remained on the Metal/Punk chart for 21 weeks ending in March 2004, and K-OS' Joyful Rebellion, which put in 19 weeks of service on the Hip-Hop chart ending in January 2005.