Courteeners race ahead for second UK Number 1 album with Pink Cactus Café

Starting the week with a bang, Courteeners race for their second UK Number 1 album with Pink Cactus Café.  

The seventh LP from the Manchester rockers, it’s the band’s first release of new material in four years, but follows little more than a year after they secured their first-ever chart-topper with the 10th anniversary reissue of debut record St. Jude. 

In doing so, they broke the UK chart record for the longest time between an album’s release and its ascent to Number 1 (14 years, 9 months and 14 days).  

British pop icons Tears For Fears approach a seventh UK Top 10 album with Songs For A Nervous Planet (2), the second LP released since their 2022 reunion. 

Queen’s first-ever studio album, Queen I, could re-enter the Top 10 for the first time ever, thanks to a special collector’s edition boxset release for its 50th anniversary. It originally peaked at Number 24 in 1976.  

Bastille’s Dan Smith’s new album, “&” (Ampersand), recorded by the group’s frontman with family and friends on a break from touring with the rest of the band, is at Number 4 midweek.  

Eminem’s former Number 1 album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) could ricochet back into the Top 10 following the physical release of its Expanded Mourner’s Edition (5), having previously spent three weeks at the summit this summer. 

This week’s Top 10 could be rounded out by new entries from Amyl & The Sniffers, aiming for their first Top 10 album with Cartoon Darkness (6), Pixies’ The Night The Zombies Came (8), Andrea Bocelli’s Duets (9) and Laura Marling’s first album in four years, Patterns In Repeat (10).  

American pop firebrand Halsey commits to self-examination on the ultra-personal The Great Impersonator (11), which tracks to become her fifth UK Top 20 LP, while ABBA’s The Singles – The First Fifty Years compilation is another potential new entry inside the Top 20 (13). 

Green Day’s generation-defining seventh album American Idiot is predicted to re-enter the Top 20, just in time for its 20th anniversary (16), having originally peaked topped the charts in 2004. 

British electro duo Underworld hope for a seventh Top 40 LP with Strawberry Hotel (17), their first full-length collection in five years. 

Bryan Ferry’s singles compilation Retrospective Selected Recordings ’73-’23 (26) aims for a Top 40 debut, as does Kids In Glass Houses’ Pink Flamingo (28), on track to become the Welsh band’s fifth consecutive Top 40 LP.  

Elsewhere, we see Razorlight’s first record in six years Planet Nowhere (33), Clannad’s Legend (34) and Beth Hart’s You Still Got Me (36) in the mix this week.