ANOTHER WEEK AND STILL NO HAT

Well, dog my cats: Crash My Party by Capitol Nashville’s hatless star Luke Bryan holds on to #1 this week on the HITS Album Sales Chart with 158k. Which means UMG Nashville chief Mike Dungan has yet another reason to fire his six-guns in the air and shout “Yeee-hawww.” We hope he does, anyway.

The biggest debut, meanwhile, comes from Columbia troubadour John Mayer, who scores 145k for his new Paradise Valley, which earns him #2 and a hearty “Good show, old bean” from label head Rob Stringer. Mayer’s last album, 2012’s Born and Raised, bowed with 219k and is approaching 600k RTD.

The rest of the Top 5 is all debuts: Atlantic’s TGT (#3, 70k), Mailboat’s Jimmy Buffett (#4, 60k) and Columbia’s Odd Future dude Earl Sweatshirt (#5, 48k).

A bit further down we have bows for RCA’s A$AP Ferg (#8, 31k) and Sony Masterworks’ Tedeschi Trucks Band (#11, 25k), among others.

Among chart veterans, Star Trak/Interscope’s Robin Thicke (#6, 46k, -1%), Disney’s Teen Beach ST (#9, 31k, flat) are hanging particularly tough. We also find a noteworthy post-VMA boost for #14 Bruno Mars (22k, +36%), whose Unorthodox Jukebox was also pumped with change thanks to a $7.99 iTunes sale, and smaller ones for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (#21, 16k, +6%) and RCA’s Justin Timberlake (#22, 15k, +3%). Expect to see substantially more VMA impact on next week’s chart.

The week’s biggest gainer was Dualtone’s The Lumineers, the deluxe version of whose album sparked a #49-27 jump and 79% increase.

Bryan’s earlier release Tailgates & Tanlines, meanwhile, remained on the chart but slipped to #31 with 9k.

Next week we’ll crank up the volume with a new release from Warner Bros. rock outfit Avenged Sevenold (currently causing mayhem on the iTunes album chart), as well as Def Jam/IDJ’s Big Sean, among others. And with Q4 within spitting distance, expect things to ramp up seriously in the subsequent weeks.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a lunch at UMPG. If we don’t hurry, all the entrees will get smoked before we get there.