Album Sweep: June 7, 2014 - Part One....

Part one of this week's "album sweep" is here, sampling the records that are making their debut on Billboard magazine's official Top 200 Albums sales chart this week. As always, I've included links to buy anything you see, but if you can, drop by an independent record store. It'll do the economy good!

The top-selling album of the week is the fourth consecutive #1 studio album for British modern rock titans Coldplay, who sold over 383,000 copies of their sixth record Ghost Stories. Their first, X&Y, came back in 2005...

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Another artist having a banner week is country rock hunk Brantley Gilbert, who sold over 200K of his third album Just As I Am to place it at #2. It's his second top-10 album and highest rank so far...

American Idol eleventh-season winner Phillip Phillips scores his second top-10 album out of two tries at #7 with Behind The Light. His first, The World From The Side Of The Moon, came in at #4 in 2012, though ending up one of the top 20 albums sold last year...

Although its release isn't until June 6th, the soundtrack to the film The Fault In Our Stars rockets in at #8. The compilation has tracks from indie artists like Birdy, Ed Sheeran, and Jake Bugg. The movie, which stars Shailene Woodley, tracks the connection between two cancer patients.

The current Tonight Show "house band", the Roots, return at #11 with their eleventh studio album ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. Six of their efforts have reached the top-10, their highest being a tie between 1998's Things Fall Apart and 2004's The Tipping Point, which both peaked at #4...

While two members of the indie-rock group Bright Eyes put together the soundtrack to Fault Of Our Stars, the trio's leader, Conor Oberst, comes in on his own at #19 with his sixth solo album Upside Down Mountain. His self-titled effort in 2008 went up to #15...

R.E.M. are back with a collection of acoustic nuggets for Unplugged 1991/2001: The Complete Sessions at #21. It's their third and most successful of their three live albums to make the chart. All in all, they've been to #1 twice, with Out Of Time in 1991 and then again with Monster in 1994...

Blues-rock guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd returns at #25 with his seventh studio album with his band, Goin' Home. It's his first to reach the top-40. Kenny is married to one of Mel Gibson's daughters, by the way...

That's all for the first half of the new bunch...out of these eight the three I would go for first are the Coldplay, The Roots, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd sets...

I'll be back tomorrow with part two...