175 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
Life's big issues by one of the best bands around.
Rumoured to be Elbow's last new album in the traditional sense of the word (the band have hinted that future releases may be in the form of EP's / singles only) they return here with what can only be described as a beautiful, masterful, heartbreakingly delicate collection of simply brilliant songs.
It's an album on which Guy Garvey, lead singer and lyricist,...
9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Not as good as Asleep in the Back or Cast of Thousands
I really like elbow. Probably my favourite band, but i think this album is a move away from their best which is clearly their first album - asleep in the back. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good album, the 3* rating is probably not fair, more a comparison with their other albums. If you have the others already, get this, it's really good. but if you are new to elbow...
Rumoured to be Elbow's last new album in the traditional sense of the word (the band have hinted that future releases may be in the form of EP's / singles only) they return here with what can only be described as a beautiful, masterful, heartbreakingly delicate collection of simply brilliant songs.
It's an album on which Guy Garvey, lead singer and lyricist, seeks to address the big issues of life, love and loss and the resulting collection of songs is perhaps Elbow's finest to date.
"Starlings" starts the album off with aplomb, a hushed harmonised intro of vocals, glockenspiel and piano giving way to a huge burst of horns before Guy Garvey begins his vocal. Garvey has the sort of voice that could sing the entire telephone book to you and you'd still find it deep, and meaningful and melancholically beautiful.
"Bones Of You" with it's flamenco influences, details lyrically that moment whereby you're rushing around a town centre when suddenly you catch a few bars of a song you last hear when you were happy, and somewhere else, and it blasts you back to that time. And back to the love you felt then; "And I'm five years ago/and three thousand miles away". Musically it's quite a commercial and accessible song, like a few on the album. And there's a bitter lyrical under taste in the fact that it becomes apparent that the singer of the song has been lying to himself to a greater or lesser extent, all these years. Brilliant stuff.
Mirrorball is a typically stunning and beautiful Elbow ballad; "Dawn gives me a shadow I know to be taller. All down to you. Everything has changed." over acoustic drums and semi-whispered, right in your ear and head vocals. Gorgeous strings too. Stirring and yet romantic.
Grounds For Divorce, a track many of you have probably heard by now, or at the least seen the country and western tinged video, is based around a stinging guitar riff, part Bloc Party part Led Zep, and a darkly humorous lyric about spending far too much time in a spit and sawdust underground bar; "I've been working on a cocktail / Called grounds for divorce"
With "Audience With The Pope" Garvey tackles religion in a song that he's dubbed "A Bond theme if Bond was from Bury and a recovering Catholic.". It even has the requisite Bond-theme-esque guitar solo.
Next track "Weather To Fly" is beautiful and the sort of track Snow Patrol would record if they could actually write and sing songs that were anything deeper than shallow. It starts with a heartbreaking falsetto sub-vocal and a bass line that sounds distinctly "Chasing Cars" before the beautiful lyrics spin out over the gentle beats;
Pounding the streets where my fathers feet still
Ring from the walls,
we'd sing in the doorways,
or bicker and row
Just figuring how we were wired inside
Perfect weather to fly.
Brilliant.
Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver is a stunningly intelligent track in which the misery of someone else's life is played out through all of us. Sounds complicated - it's actually brilliant. It's a heartfelt song, the type which Elbow do best, an industrial percussive line underpinning a swooning vocal and a string laden melody.
Richard Hawley duets with Garvey on next track "Fix", a chirpy, atmospheric, after last orders little number which lyrically deals with a pair of chancers making plans for their ill gotten gains.
Some Riot sounds like a mournful plea to a long lost friend, possibly "The Seldom Seen Kid" himself (Bryan Glancy, a friend of the bands who sadly died in 2007). "I think when he's drinking / he's drowning some kind of riot / what is my friend trying to hide / cos it's breaking my heart / it's breaking my heart".
"One Day Less" sounds like the natural successor to "Any Day Now", whether the main character's luck has changed. Or has it? The strings soar, the drums beat endlessly and Garvey swoons about seeing the light, and being in love.
"Friend Of Ours" is definitely a tribute to the bands lost friend Bryan Glancy, the seldom seen kid. It's beautiful, not at all sugary, and genuinely touching and moving. A fitting album closer if there ever was one. If Garvey's "Love you mate....." doesn't move you then you must have a heart of stone, surely.
This is a fantastic album, sure to please Elbow fans and I think equally sure to attract hoardes of new fans too. If you like your music delicate yet powerful, swooning yet direct and happy yet sad - this is most certainly the album, and the band, for you.
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I first heard Elbow on one of those late night car journeys listening to the radio. The track was Any Day Now and I thought it was amazing. Slightly dissonant, almost like a medieval chant and it stuck in my head for days. There have been a further two albums since that debut which are both filled with consistently interesting tracks and increasingly honest lyrics dealing with Guy Garvey's relationships and emotions. Why anyone would bother listening to a band like Coldplay when they could have Elbow instead is beyond me but there we go. The band have said that this may be their last album proper with future work released on ep's and singles so is it a fitting farewell (of sorts)?
The album begins with Starlings; a cacophony of sound which suddenly cuts out to reveal a quiet glockenspiel punctured with loud horns and eventually Guy Garvey's voice sounding as heartfelt as ever. Bones Of You takes its starting point from the power of a song to transport you back in time to a memory - 'And I'm five years ago/And three thousand miles away' but we should realise that Garvey is not a rose tinted spectacles kind of guy. Mirrorball is a great example of what Elbow do well; a gorgeous ballad with piano, drums, soaring strings and Garvey's voice up close and personal, filled with emotion ' When we make the moon our mirror ball/the street's an empty stage;/the city sirens - violins./Everything has changed.' The tempo lifts with first single Grounds For Divorce, a down and dirty, bluesey, western influenced anthem with a kick. And then we have Audience With The Pope, a challenge to religion which with its Russian sounding melody comes on like a Bond theme 'I've an audience with the Pope/And I'm saving the world at eight/But if she says she needs me/Everybody's gonna have to wait'. Weather to Fly has a simple melody and three verses which go round in a similar way to Any Day Now, building in intensity, a beautiful track about the band's wish to follow their own course. Then we have the huge Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver a song which soars lyrically, vocally and musically. Richard Hawley guest duets with Garvey on The Fix, a real character piece which is steeped in smoky, after hours atmosphere. Some Riot is a quiet song, a plaintive cry to a friend in trouble. The big crowd pleaser One Day Like This is the penultimate track, filled with strings and a rousing chorus, sure to be a festival and live favourite with it's chorus of 'It's looking like a beautiful day'. The closing track Friend Of Ours is a heartfelt tribute to the seldom seen kid of the title, Bryan Glancy, a friend of the band who died two years ago. 'Never very good at goodbyes/So gentle shoulder charge.../Love you mate.' Touching stuff.
This is a fantastic collection of songs, not the kind of watered down pop that will make them a chart success like Coldplay or Snow Patrol but the sound of a band confident in their abilities (this album was self-produced for the first time). They have always been good at creating depth musically, and with the honesty of some of the lyrics and Garvey given full range with his voice this is a fitting tribute not only to Glancy but to the band themselves for following their own direction.
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Let me get one thing straight - there is no hype surrounding this album, every word of praise lavished on this album has been justified and, in 'The Seldom Seen Kid', Elbow haven't just made one of the best albums of 2008, they have made one of the best albums of all time. It isn't often that the grandeur and beauty of the music is equally matched by the poetry and prose of the lyrics, but on this album it is almost a battle between the lyrics and music to see which excels most. Winning the Mercury Music Prize for this album was a great moment for Elbow and, as far as I am concerned, it was a worthy winner, although it has caused me just a little bemusement as their last album, 'Leaders Of The Free World' was pretty much just as exceptional as this one.
In a way, winning the Mercury Music Prize is a double edged sword, because it will bring listeners to this album who wouldn't naturally wander in this direction. Some will be absolutely beguiled by the album, some won't really get what the fuss is all about. Quite honestly, if you approach 'The Seldom Seen Kid' with a superficial pop mentality then you're likely to be disappointed. If you approach this album thinking that you can press play, listen to it once, and then expect to get all it has to offer, then you're likely to be disappointed. Indeed, if you're easily bored by slower, more expressive music, then this album isn't likely to be your cup of tea. I don't honestly know how many times I have listened to this album - my only estimate is "lots" - but, like any truly great release, I appreciate it more and more each time I listen to it.
You just can't pick favourites from 'The Seldom Seen Kid' - well I can't, anyway. The vast majority of the compositions are just brilliant. How can I put the powerful, heartbreaking strings of 'A Day Like This' above the latin-influenced passion of 'The Bones Of You'? How could I possibly put the tremendously catchy, bluesy, 'Grounds For Divorce' above the sheer magnificence of 'The Loneliness Of The A Tower Crane Driver'? I could go on until all of the titles are exhausted, but I won't. It isn't a case of having something for everybody here, it is a case of having everything for somebody, all glued together by Guy Garvey's gorgeous voice. This is a piece of art which speaks to me on so many emotional and intellectual levels. This is an album which towers over all of its contemporaries in terms of ambition, execution and quality - nothing else this year has really come close. The word is often overused, but this IS a masterpiece.
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By rights you would think that Guy Garvey, Elbow's lead vocalist and lyricist, should have carved out a career for himself as some sort of latterday folk troubadour instead of fronting one of the bands threatening to break out of Coldplay's shadow. His artless vocals, thoughtful poetry and low-key melodic lines mean that every ballad here seems to come from the heart. Yet arguably it's also this emotional honesty that has so far failed to entrance the wider audience so successfully harvested by Muse.
The Seldom Seen Kid does little to change Elbow's palette, but shows a band that continues to grow from album to album, patiently assembling a body of work. "The Fix" - with an entirely fitting guest spot for Richard Hawley - is slyly comic; "Grounds For Divorce" is a fist-pumping, hand-clapping homage to Glam rock. Both tracks are minor in comparison to the ballads, but they add light & shade to an album that rarely rocks and hardly ever dances.
The song that should have you at least swaying from foot to foot is "One Day Like This": the album's main feel-good moment, propelled upwards by an obtrusive string section and featuring a big, singalong chorus. To be honest, I'll take "Newborn" (from Asleep At The Back) over this song any day, but it could possibly turn into a defining moment at a Summer festival.
Otherwise, this is a dark, haunted album, perhaps better enjoyed while pouring over the lyric booklet in a bedsit than crushing a beer can at Glastonbury. "Friend of Ours" (an economical sketch of a song) points the bewildered listener to some heartbreak unexplained by the song (but helpfully footnoted by William Rycroft's review here), and it is probably the heartbroken who will find the deepest resonance in this collection of songs.
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...can't seem to get that lump out of my throat. Or stop listening to Weather to Fly... could be a connection there.
My god I love this.
Seen them live four times now and the last time a few weeks ago was the best. They've been together for 18 years so it wouldn't be surprising if they stop making albums, but I really hope they don't - each one just gets better.
This is my favourite album by my favourite band. So there.
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Slowly , inexorably ,Elbow have become the BIG band we can rely on. More so than Radiohead (Whose admirably non-commercial bent makes them hard to warm to musically sometimes) more so than R.E.M. who have become rather derivative , and certainly more so than pompous blowhards like Coldplay and U2 . Their debut "Asleep In The Back " still sounds magnificent and while for me "Leaders Of The Free World" didn't quite justify the hype it is still an album with wondrous moments. "The Seldom Seen Kid" therefore has been as hotly anticipated as the next Paris Hilton home video . A lot of pressure for the band then ...
Keyboard player Craig Potter has taken over production duties and while he's not installed any major changes in the band's sound, there's a sparkle and variety about the album that renders it instantaneously appealing. As is usual with Elbow, significant subjects dominate. Several members of the band have recently become fathers, and the album is dedicated to their close friend Bryan Glancy, a Mancunian singer/songwriter who died in 2006. Of course, there's also the usual Guy Garvey ruminations on love, bereavement and relationships, written with his earthy eloquence and wit.
The usual guitars , keyboards and drums are embellished by strings ,brass and what is credited as "The Elbow choir". The sound is expansive and hefty , several songs alternate between quiet/loud moments and Garvey ,s slightly gravely tones are in fine fettle .He can do the sensitive stuff ....well sensitively but when some vocal thrust is needed he is never found short of horsepower.
Take the exceptional "The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver" where the aching cavernous strings see Garvey lament perceptively till at the swelling orchestration he howls with consummate empathy .That's just one of several outstanding songs on this album. "Starlings " has warbling electronics and languorous vocal backing punctuated by truly startling ruptures of brass and great lines like "I'm asking you to back a horse that's good for glue". "The Bones Of You " sets off kilter percussion to thrumming guitar notes and morphs from lovely melody to reverberating dissension like a butterfly turning into an iron vampire bat.
The pretty acoustic "MirrorBall" lends itself to a glistening orchestral in contrast to the grinding industrial tones of "Grounds For Divorce" which still has a memorable hummed verse line. It's that ability to match the incongruous to purring melodies that makes a band like Elbow so special. "An Audience For The Pope" sounds like a soundtrack with espalier keyboards and a melody as smooth as a racing snake. "Weather To Fly" is a truly unparalleled ballad with multi tracked vocals where Garvey is asking "Are we having the time of our life's?" while sounding utterly forlorn .
Yet in the midst of all this touching splendour comes the duet with Richard Hawley "The Fix" a playful character piece about a pair of scammers with slightly arch harmonies , fairground organ and fifties guitar . "Some Riot" is a solemn incremental ballad with trembling chords and this segues into "One Day Like This" which has dreamy slightly oriental strings which suddenly jar like a stubbed toe then turn all dreamy again as Garvey cry's "Holy cow I love your eyes". The Elbow come in for the last third in a redolent of "Grace Under Pressure" from their last album ."Friends Of Ours" is the closing elegy to Glancy with crystal piano notes, dew heavy guitar and another exquisite string arrangement. Hidden extra "Were Away" is brief and like a bar lounge number with the lights dimmed low and tumbler filled with scotch on the rocks on top of the piano.
The Seldom Seen Kid is an exceptional album , full of pathos , compassion, vulnerability and yet also brimming with strength and self deprecating wit. It does that tremendously difficult thing of matching genuine sonic and musical innovation with a sterling ear for a rousing tune. Okay it won't blow your windows out with astounding clinical soniferous experimentation which is what some people will criticise it for no doubt. While it's on though the world will go away and you feel truly alive and full of rampant possibilities. That's what great music does. That's what Elbow can do better than most .On this album they do it a hell of a lot. Holy cow I love this album .
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There are more in depth reviews below so I'll keep this short.
Suffice to say that it annoys me greatly that Elbow are lumped in with bands such as Coldplay and Keane. Now these are not bad bands, I just find them dull and listless. (my opinion) But if you DO like these bands, then you will probably enjoy this album - Elbow's best yet by the way. However be prepared to find music which is more uplifting, soulful, exciting (yes!) varied, rewarding and quite frankly more beautiful than you are perhaps used to.
I don't mean to patronise, but in this case the critics are right, Elbow are the beez neez in this niche (and in most other niches as well) so music fans of the world take note...
BUY THIS ALBUM - YOU WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED!
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Being a fan of Elbow for many years now I feel the need to write this having being privileged to see them in concert at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on October 6th. Considering the concert had sold out before the Mercury Music Awards winners were announced Guy Garvey admitted he knew he was "Amongst Friends" and indeed he was. The set was immaculate ,inspiring , melodic , awe inspiring. The audience were singing along with every word with tears in their eyes sometimes just nodding their heads in gentle reflection that this was as good as it gets. Elbow are our mates, our friends, absolutely unassuming considering their recent successes . We felt part of an intimate experience. Guy said after each song " Are you all alright?" We were . When a lady fainted near the stage , how many bands would stop playing to ask her name , to check she was okay ? I felt exhilerated at the end after an encore of Newborn and Scattered Black and Whites that left the crowd perfectly satisfied . We shared their first night nerves and look forward to the next chance to share some time with our band, our mate, Guy. Never lose what you have got, its what makes you so special.
See you soon.
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