FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Seventy-One: Elbow
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ONE band that I have overlooked until now…
are the tremendous Elbow. The Bury-formed band are legends who have released so many great albums. I am going to select their essential albums, an underrated gem and their latest studio album. There is also an Elbow-related book that is worth getting. This is quite timely, as the band announced the forthcoming album, Flying Dream 1. Before then, I want to bring in some biography from AllMusic:
“Cinematic British rock quintet Elbow rose to public consciousness with their acclaimed 2001 debut, Asleep in the Back. Boasting an orchestral sound, Elbow injected a wider range of emotions into their music than most of their guitar-based British peers at the time. While their first three outings established them as significant players on the U.K. scene, it was their sprawling fourth LP, The Seldom Seen Kid, that cemented their status, winning the 2008 Mercury Prize and setting a precedent within the band for self-production. It would inform their approach on subsequent albums, like 2011's Build a Rocket Boys! and 2014's The Take Off and Landing of Everything, the latter of which became their first U.K. chart-topper. Along the way, Elbow collected Brit and Ivor Novello awards, and their music was featured heavily in the 2012 London Olympic Games, where they performed during the closing ceremony. Released in 2017, their seventh album, Little Fictions, also reached number one in the U.K.
Vocalist Guy Garvey, drummer Richard Jupp, organist Craig Potter, guitarist Mark Potter, and bassist Pete Turner all met during the early '90s while attending college in Bury. After moving several miles south to Manchester proper, the band went through a couple of developmental stages before attracting the interest of Island Records, which signed the group in 1998. Island was bought out by Universal several months later, though, and Elbow found themselves dropped from the label as a result. After a partnership with EMI also dissolved, the guys linked up with local independent label Uglyman and released two EPs, Newborn and Any Day Now. The acclaimed EPs gained the band a contract with V2, which released 2001's equally tipped Asleep in the Back. The record was short-listed as a nominee for 2001's Mercury Prize and was issued in the States in early 2002.
Cast of Thousands, which appeared in 2004, proved to be a strong, critically acclaimed follow-up. Leaders of the Free World, inspired by political events and behavior in the media, was released in fall 2005, with The Seldom Seen Kid following in 2008. Although all three of Elbow's prior albums had enjoyed significant popularity in the U.K., The Seldom Seen Kid was the band's first album to go multi-platinum, eventually selling over one million copies and winning the 2008 Mercury Prize. Writing sessions for another album began in 2010, and Build a Rocket Boys! was released one year later, followed in 2012 by Dead in the Boot, a collection of B-sides and non-album cuts.
That summer, not only did the group's ambitious, specially written track "First Steps" serve as the theme to the BBC's coverage of the London Olympics, but Elbow also played two songs at the closing ceremony of the games, which helped to further bolster sales of their back catalog. Recording sessions for a sixth studio album -- eventually titled The Take Off and Landing of Everything -- took place at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire in late 2012 and were completed in their own Salford studio the next year. Following the January release of the single "New York Morning," the album appeared to strong reviews in March 2014 and became their first to debut at the top of the U.K. charts; it also became their highest-charting album in the U.S., peaking at 83.
Elbow released an EP called Lost Worker Bee in July 2015, after which the group took a brief hiatus. During this time off, Guy Garvey released a solo album entitled Courting the Squall in the autumn of 2015, and drummer Richard Jupp left the group in March of 2016. Elbow returned to action in February 2017 with the British chart-topping Little Fictions, which was, like every album since The Seldom Seen Kid, produced by Craig Potter. Two years later, the band returned with their eighth long-player, Giants of All Sizes, which featured guest appearences by Jesca Hoop, the Plumedores, and Chilli Chilton. The album debuted at number one on the U.K. charts”.
If you need a guide to the incredible Elbow, then the suggestions below should point you in the right direction. I have been a fan of the band for years. With every release, they offer something new. If you need suggestions as to which Elbow albums you should own, then I hope that the information below…
IS of use.
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The Four Essential Albums
Asleep in the Back
Release Date: 7th May, 2001
Label: V2
Producer: Steve Osborne/Ben Hillier/Danny Evans, Elbow
Standout Tracks: Red/Powder Blue/Coming Second
Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Asleep-In-The-Back-Vinyl-Reissue/6TJX13UA000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3T49xNB5QF2hZOCCGQ3Mra?si=IHMBZIaJShqJl909EhBMdQ&dl_branch=1
Review:
“Inaccurately belittled elsewhere as a prog group, Elbow have instead done what so many groups struggle to achieve. They’ve made an album that works as one solid body. From the murmured Nowheresville desperation of 'Any Day Now' and its hypnotic organ grind through to the piano-rich nostalgia of the final 'Scattered Black And Whites', Elbow create an atmosphere of universal intensity.
To do this they use a lot of different techniques and a lot of different sounds, but this doesn’t make them prog. It’s simply that rarest of gifts: originality. You can hear this creativity at work as 'Bitten By The Tailfly'’s soft-focus atmospherics are blown apart by guitarist Mark Potter’s scratchy new wave hook. Or when singer Guy Garvey hails the gift of life on 'Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)' over the most regal and dreamlike of keyboard riffs, or when a saxophone suddenly joins 'Powder Blue'’s mournful procession of melody towards the song’s climax.
But if Elbow’s music soars in many directions to reach its conclusions, Garvey’s lyrics remain grounded. These are not songs that try to disguise their meaning with imagery. Every word is relayed plainly by Garvey’s monochrome delivery, each one an integral player in its own gritty drama: there are songs about watching someone being swallowed by substance abuse ('Red'); about the fear of love growing old ('New Born'); about drunken mating rituals ('Bitten By The Tailfly'); about the rage of the spurned ('Coming Second'); and about ambition and self-loathing ('Don’t Mix Your Drinks').
This may make ‘Asleep In The Back’ sound an overly melancholic and heavy album, but one leaves its company feeling strangely enriched – a sensation familiar from another source. Seems that after all the pale imitators, Radiohead finally have a competitor worthy of healthy comparison” – NME
Choice Cut: Newborn
Cast of Thousands
Release Date: 18th August, 2003
Label: V2
Producers: Ben Hillier/Elbow
Standout Tracks: Fugitive Motel/Not a Job/Grace Under Pressure
Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Cast-Of-Thousands-Vinyl-Reissue/6MSW13UA000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/46C5u3MKZ7aZPyhFIuPQP4?si=JGYdJUseQ0CkppA7ojzGEw&dl_branch=1
Review:
“There doesn't appear to be an Elbow consensus: they are their own band; they are the Coldplay it's OK to like; they are the Talk Talk for people who've never heard Talk Talk (or Catherine Wheel); they are somewhere between Supertramp and Superchunk; they are part of a succession of over-introspective, twaddle-peddling British rock bands. They are most of these things -- the positive things, at least -- at various points. On Cast of Thousands, Elbow's second album, the group does deserve to take its rightful place as one of the most respectable rock bands going. What separates this album from the debut isn't all that apparent on the surface. Downcast songs about relationships remain the stock in trade, but the sound has made natural advancements and the quality control is less prone to malfunctioning. In other words, they have followed through on whatever promise Asleep in the Back held; you could sense this would happen, just as you could sense that, after Lazer Guided Melodies, Spiritualized would make an even better record the next time out. However predictable, the minor differences add up to a lot. More so than ever, Elbow's greatest asset is that the band is capable of making big sounds without being bombastic or flashy. And they've tempered the characteristics that got them tagged as sad sacks, although that fact is mostly apparent in the lyrics ("place" rhymes with "virgin mother what's-her-face"; the payoff line in opener "Ribcage" goes "I wanted to explode, to pull my ribs apart and let the sun inside"). The only setback? Gospel choirs. Hopefully, at some point before they make their next album, they'll realize that their songs don't need background vocals from an entire congregation in order to feel redemptive -- or powerful. [V2 issued the album in the U.S. five months after the original U.K. release” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Fallen Angel
The Seldom Seen Kid
Release Date: 17th March, 2008
Labels: Fiction/Polydor/Geffen
Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow
Standout Tracks: Starlings/Grounds for Divorce/One Day Like This
Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/The-Seldom-Seen-Kid-LP/0KZ713UA000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/25KJ3Be6nm3mvFOOKZU2TE?si=RopxGxpVTzKbD9xSVqbuag&dl_branch=1
Review:
“Bury quintet Elbow seemed symbolic of the general fatigue. The name oozed drabness. So did the photos. They looked unprepossessing even by the standards of an era when Badly Drawn Boy was held to be suitable rock star material, despite having turned up dressed as Benny from Crossroads. Prog rock was mentioned in their interviews. Eight years on, Elbow embody almost every characteristic of the middle-ranking, makeweight alt-rock band: the albums that stall outside the Top 10, singer Guy Garvey's parallel career as a radio DJ (part of BBC 6Music's apparently inexhaustible supply of bluff north-western presenters). Incredibly, given the current climate, they've survived as a major label act for almost a decade: formerly of V2, they're now on Polydor's Fiction imprint. Perhaps the home of Snow Patrol found something comfortingly familiar about the adjectives frequently attached to Elbow - epic, melancholy - and think they can sell them to the Tesco Clubcard massive.
If so, it's tempting to wonder what the target market will make of their fourth album's opening track. Starlings is certainly epic and melancholy, but also wildly off-message. It seems rooted in the dreamy exotica of Martin Denny - the backing sounds like shimmering steel drums, there's a woozy, wordless vocal chorus - disrupted by startling blasts of brass. For anyone who's spent the past eight years studiously avoiding Elbow, perhaps fearing the band's dowdiness was contagious, Starlings offers another surprise: it's an unequivocally fantastic song. Its melody dances around the hypnotic, horizontal backing; Garvey's voice is exquisitely careworn, the opening line seems to wittily acknowledge Elbow's nearly-men status: "How dare the premier ignore my invitations?"
Those who have studiously avoided Elbow - a group that, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed, includes the present writer - should be further surprised to discover that the rest of The Seldom Seen Kid shares Starlings' virtues, if not its sound. You could argue that the Led Zepish single Grounds for Divorce aside, it all moves along at roughly the same pace, and that said pace is just shy of an articulated lorry on a fuel protest. But it finds diversity elsewhere. An Audience With the Pope is audibly under the sway of John Barry's 1960s soundtracks. The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver sweeps along, episodic and majestic. A duet with Richard Hawley called The Fix sounds like the final stages of a competition to find Britain's most charming northern singer. You keep expecting Stuart Maconie to pop up and call it a tie: racing pigeons are mentioned at one juncture, which is perhaps laying on the aye-up a bit thick, but the song is utterly enchanting regardless. Meanwhile, the melody of Weather to Fly is so indelible that, were it equipped with the requisite surging chorus, it might provide Elbow with a hit; displaying a certain winning cussedness, it is equipped instead with a brass band.
Only once do they set their sights firmly on the stadiums. One Day Like This comes complete with singalong coda and lyrics about it looking like a beautiful day, but the grand gesture doesn't really suit them. Elbow excel at fixing on small, telling details, as demonstrated by Friend of Ours, a tribute to the late Manchester musician Bryan Glancy. In nine lines, it manages to perfectly conjure up both the kind of omnipresent, luckless but beloved figure that every local music scene boasts and the halting gruffness of men expressing emotions. "So - gentle shoulder charge - love you, mate," sings Garvey. Guitars echo and strings swell behind him. As they do, Elbow sound beautifully understated rather than underwhelming, less underachieving than desperately undervalued” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: The Fix (ft. Richard Hawley)
build a rocket boys!
Release Date: 4th March, 2011
Labels: Fiction/Polydor
Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow
Standout Tracks: neat little rows/open arms/dear friends
Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Build-a-Rocket-Boys-Limited-Edition-LP/3IHU13UA000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7f2e28BTOg0IQiwUG6trp6?si=3KsujbleQhu6hrFP2q-PbQ&dl_branch=1
Review:
“Build A Rocket Boys! takes most of the misery out of the Elbow equation, which singer Guy Garvey explained had something to do with the band’s success—a Mercury Prize, a platinum record, etc. It’s a strange admission to make, but a refreshing one: Life’s been good, so the songs have cheered up. Strangely, though, Rocket doesn’t embrace the band’s poppier side. Instead, it stretches out further into more spacious arrangements and experimentation, starting with the eight-minute “The Birds,” which somehow touches on both Brit-pop and prog. (Yes, that means it owes something to Radiohead.)
Garvey remains as clever as ever within this expansive new sonic palate, offering lyrics both witty (“You’re not the man who fell to earth / You’re the man of La Mancha”) and touching. (“Did you trust your noble dreams and gentle expectations to the mercy of the night? / The night will always win.”) There’s aren’t many huge hooks or clap-along BPMs—only “High Ideals” really bumps along—but Elbow more than compensates with ballads dense with sounds and inventive tinkerings. In other words, it isn’t the type of album that will easily find its way into the hearts of those in need of a quicker, simpler fix. But a bit of patience—especially from those with a propensity for grand Brits—will be handsomely rewarded” – The A.V. Club
Choice Cut: lippy kids
The Underrated Gem
Leaders of the Free World
Release Date: 12th September, 2005
Label: V2
Producers: Elbow
Standout Tracks: Picky Bugger/Forgot Myself/Mexican Standoff
Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Leaders-Of-The-Free-World-Vinyl-Reissue/6TJZ13UA000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7o4viKB5Rqod8h2xcE60Tw?si=a8lTuTnNQGK3oiXBfmQywg&dl_branch=1
Review:
“When Doves headed to the studio for the recording of their third album, 2005's Some Cities, they returned home to Manchester. With that kind of scenic inspiration and emotional attachment, Some Cities resulted in Doves' best of their career at that moment. It is mere coincidence that their musical mates, Elbow, have done the same for their third album, Leaders of the Free World. Such a coincidence is a bit comforting in the respect that Elbow do not stray from what they have previously done. Despite being cast as a gloomy bunch on their first two albums -- 2001's Asleep in the Back and 2004's Cast of Thousands -- Elbow trudge on as an emotional band. Singer/songwriter Guy Garvey doesn't wallow in failed relationships as much as he enjoys being cynical and playful about the world around him. Sure, Elbow's more melodic, pensive moments such as "The Stops" and "The Everthere" are classic heartbreakers, with piano-driven melodies lush in melancholic acoustic guitars and Garvey's somber disposition. Leaders of the Free World really comes to life when Elbow give in, allowing these songs to grow into something glorious. Album opener "Station Approach" and "Forget Myself" are brilliant examples of this. "Forget Myself" metaphorically points fingers at a media-obsessed culture that is equally blasé about its own issues. Garvey throws his hands in the air, sighing to himself to "look for a plot where I can bury my broken heart." The album's title track also criticizes a very questionable political system, demanding, "I need to see the Commander in Chief and remind what was passed on to me" as a storm of electric guitars mirrors an anxious, waxing delivery by the band itself -- "Passing the gun from father to feckless son, we're climbing a landslide where only the good die young." Elbow are a great band regardless of what it takes for them to find their footing. Leaders of the Free World is a bit more rock & roll than not, with guts and heart, because Elbow have finally embraced their powerful, surrounding space this time out. [The U.S. version includes a limited-edition DVD of videos for each song on Leaders of the Free World.]” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Leaders of the Free World
The Latest Album
Giants of All Sizes
Release Date: 11th October, 2019
Label: Polydor
Producer: Craig Potter
Standout Tracks: Empires/White Noise White Heat/Weightless
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4EqYFNisfHX1IPA0IoaKI2?si=2DYCIS2yRWOxdxd-Xv8cBQ&dl_branch=1
Review:
“You can hear the influence in the complex but tightly woven mesh of instruments on Empires and the opener Dexter & Sinister, which starts out driven by a distorted bass riff not a million miles removed from that on The Seldom Seen Kid’s Grounds for Divorce, but seems to turn into a different song entirely midway through. Moreover, if it never lacks melodies – Seven Veils and My Trouble are particularly lovely – Giants of All Sizes digs into prog’s more disruptive side, the wilful awkwardness expressed by its jarring time signatures, unpredictable shifts and knotty cramp-inducing riffs.
The result is what you might call a dislocated Elbow, noticeably light on songs that might cause festival crowds to hug each other and raise plastic pint pots aloft, big on taking their signature motifs and upending them. “All together now,” offers Garvey midway through Dexter & Sinister. What follows isn’t a singalong chorus, but a rambling piano solo. Guitar solos you expect to be soaring inducements to punch the air never quite achieve lift-off: they rasp too harshly, come sprinkled with moments of squeaky discord or are possessed of an ungainly, staggering gait. When the strings arrive on The Delayed 3:15, they don’t provide the usual stirring, epic swell: they follow a twitchy, scattered pattern played on a clarinet. The net result is as agitated and troubled as the song’s narrator, who’s watching the body of a suicide being extracted from beneath a train by “pale-faced kids in rubber gloves, dressed as cops”. Doldrums, meanwhile, features a very Elbow-ish lyrical sentiment – “all of this stuff in our veins is the same” – but it’s depicted as a sentiment only “desperate men” would suggest. The song’s climax repeats the line over and over again, but defies you to join in. One voice distractedly mutters it, another wheezes and pants the line between gulps of breath.
It’s debatable whether Elbow’s patent brand of warmth and optimism really is redundant in the current climate. One of the striking things about Nick Cave’s rapturously received Ghosteen was how empathetic and hopeful its songs sounded, potentiated by the fact that empathy and hope are two things in short supply at the moment. But the galvanising effect on Elbow’s sound isn’t really up for question. Musically, Giants of All Sizes is richer and stranger than anything they’ve released since their commercial breakthrough. Even when it finally settles back into more comfortable lyrical terrain – My Trouble’s hymning of cosy domesticity, On Deronda Street’s paean to parenthood – the music strays beyond their usual comfort zone: ragged and underpinned by glitchy electronic beats. It suits them out there” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Dexter & Sinister
The Elbow Book
Reluctant Heroes: The Story of Elbow
Author: Mark Middles
Publication Date: 30th September, 2009
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Synopsis:
“When Elbow won the Mercury Prize in 2008 for their fourth studio album - "The Seldom Seen Kid" - the accolade followed a 17 year long career marked by four classic albums and a cult following that cast them in the role of Manchester's best kept music secret. Elbow started out at a time when great songs and evocative lyrics were not generally recognised. Their music transcended genre, age and image, eventually finding it's own distinctive global audience as Guy Garvey evolved into one of the most brilliant and intriguing lyricists of recent times. This book charts Elbow's long journey from humble roots through modest success to international recognition. It features interviews with the band and those close to them to form the most complete band history to date” – Amazon.co.uk