Monday 07 March 2011
The night will always win
In the 90s and early 00s, I was a voracious consumer of UK Music magazines, most notably the now defunct Select (thanks to Frank at Chromewaves for pointing me to the guy with enough time on his hands to digitize copies of the magazine), and remember quite clearly when Elbow were being touted as the “next Coldplay” on the release of their first album, Asleep in the Back. With each successive record, that same proclamation was being made, albeit with varying descriptors: “next Radiohead”, “next big thing” etc. etc. Right from the get go, I was always willing to give each new Elbow record a chance to make an impression on me. While they all made a decent impression, sadly, none of their records ever made a lasting one.
In 2008 when Elbow released The Seldom Seen Kid, their fourth long player, I gave the ragged Mancunians another shot. Record #4 was the candy bar that held the golden ticket; my adoration of The Seldom Seen Kid was instantaneous. I wasn’t alone in that sentiment, as it went on to win the Mercury Music Prize, and a new army of fist-pumping, lighter-flicking fans who took up “One Day Like This” as their new anthem.
So what does a hard-working, rough-around-the-edges, play-by-our-own-rules band do to follow up such a massive (and unexpected) success?
They hunker down and do more of the same. Eschewing the transmogrification favoured by the likes of their contemporaries, Elbow remain the people’s band. Build a Rocket Boys! Album opener “The Birds” is a sinewy prog-rock exercise in restraint (yes, there can be such a thing) that sets up the rest of teh album beautifully. There’s no direct descendant of The Seldom Seen Kid‘s more anthemic moments like “Grounds For Divorce” and “One Day Like This”, but “Open Amrs” is the one song that comes closest. Songs like “Lippy Kids”, “Jesus is a Rochdale Girl” and “Neat Little Rows” will set hearts aflame all the same though, thanks to Guy Garvey’s every-man, poetic lyrics and impassioned vocal performance.
Build A Rockey Boys! is out today on Fiction Records in the UK and will be available digitally in North America tomorrow, followed by a physical release on this side of the Atlantic on April 12.
Video: Elbow “Neat Little Rows”
Video: Elbow “Lippy Kids (live)”
Facebook: Elbow
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 8:35 am and is filed under QBiM SPiNS, ViDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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