The Dears Return To The Top Of The Chart

Montreal's lovable self-described "gang of losers" are proving once again that they're being too hard on themselves, as The Dears' Gang Of Losers recaptures the #1 spot on the campus radio chart after a week's absence.

Also moving up a spot is Chad VanGaalen's Skelliconnection to #2. That caused last week's top album, TV On The Radio's Return To Cookie Mountain, to drop to #3. Les Georges Leningrad's Sangue Puro moves up a position to #4 and is followed by two albums rocketing up the chart. The Decemberists' The Crane Wife rumbles up 13 spots to land at #5, while Beck's The Information makes a 40-position move to land solidly at #6. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton's Knives Don't Have Your Back slips to #7, and The Golden Dogs' Big Eye Little Eye returns to the top 10 by rising nine positions to #8. Another album making a huge jump is the Mint Records Presents... The CBC Radio 3 Sessions compilation, which moves up 35 spots to #9. Junior Boys' So This Is Goodbye drops six positions to #10.

The Chart Sizzler Award goes to Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet, which enters at #28. There were only eight new entries this week, with Fake Cops' Thundertheft arriving at #30 and Robert Pollard's Normal Happiness debuting at #34. Other notable new arrivals include The Awkward Stage's Heaven Is For Easy Girls at #36, Birdapres' Get It Done at #37 and Classified's Hitch Hikin' Music at #50. There's some interesting chart airplay irony surrounding those last two albums when comparing the top 50 chart to the Hip-Hop chart because Classified trumped Birdapres to take the top spot on the specialty top 10. I guess hip-hop programmers like Classified, while open-format jocks prefer Birdapres.

The planets must have been in alignment this week, as all five specialty charts featured changes to their respective #1 spots. In four-and-a-half years of compiling weekly specialty charts, this is the first time this has happened. It's hard to believe, but true. The aforementioned Classified's Hitch Hikin' Music moved up one spot to grab #1 on the Hip-Hop top 10. Modo Trio With Jamie Saft's The Uninvited moved up three places to top the Jazz/Blues chart. Both Mini's Audio Hygiene on the Electronic top 10 and Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars' Living Like A Refugee on the World/Folk chart moved up five places to grab the #1 position on their respective charts. Iron Maiden's A Matter Of Life & Death comes out of left field to debut at #1 on the Metal/Punk chart.