Charty Chart Chat: Neon Bible And Sound Of Silver Make Waves

For anyone who follows music charts vigilantly, the end results are always about statistics. How long has such and such band been on the chart? Who has remained at #1 the longest? What was the longest number of weeks between appearances on the chart? Those are the easy things. Then there are those unique situations, where an album appears at the top of two different charts, or an independent record company has half of the entries in the top 10. Well, this week there's another first: the same album that gets the Chart Sizzler award also debuts at the top of one of the specialty charts.

First of all, let's take a peek at the new #1 album on the top 50 chart: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. The most anticipated LP of 2007 is the follow-up to 2004's Funeral, which entered the chart in late September of that year, spent the first two weeks of October at #1 and then proceeded to hang around the top five for a grand total of 17 weeks. It finally left the chart in its 22nd week on March 11, 2005, placing it in a tie for fifth place with Sloan's One Chord To Another (1996), Stars' Set Yourself On Fire (2005) and Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton's Knives Don't Have Your Back (2007) on the longevity department.

Neon Bible reaches #1 in its fifth week on the chart, switching places with last week's #1, Do Make Say Think's You, You're A History In Rust. Apostle Of Hustle's The National Anthem Of Nowhere remains at #3, followed by The Besnard Lakes' The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, which rises four places to #4. Peter, Bjorn & John's Writer's Block stays at #5, while You Say Party! We Say Die!'s Lose All Time rockets up 26 notches to #6. Julie Doiron's Woke Myself Up continues its slide, dropping three spots to #7, while !!!'s cheekily titled Myth Takes jumps seven places to #8. It's followed by Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? at #9 and Bloc Party's A Weekend In The City at #10.

The Chart Sizzler goes to LCD Soundsystem's Sound Of Silver, which enters at #24 and just edges out Tim Hecker's Radio Amor, which debuts at #25. Alex Cuba's Agua Del Pozo enters the main chart at #30 after spending a couple weeks atop the World/Folk top 10. Other notable debuts include Wayne Petti's City Lights Align at #34, Aids Wolf Vs. Athletic Automaton's Clash Of The Life Force Warriors at #38 and The Stooges' reunion album, The Weirdness, which slips in at #50.

In addition to being the Chart Sizzler, LCD Soundsystem's Sound Of Silver debuts at #1 on the Electronic chart, equalling what Secret Mommy's Play (which drops to #6 this week) did last week. The only other new #1 on the specialty charts is the return there of The End's Elementary after an absence of one week on the Metal/Punk chart. The other three charts feature the same #1 as last week: Red1's Beg For Nothing on Hip-Hop; Antibalas' Security on World/Folk; and the Dig Your Roots: Creative Jazz compilation on Jazz/Blues.