Send "Elbow " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Elbow had already been together for nearly a decade when their debut album, Asleep in the Back, dropped in 2001. Unhip and old even among the unhip bands vying to become the "next Radiohead," playing the underdog worked out well for Elbow-- both at the start and over the span of three critically acclaimed and modestly successful records. After 2008's The Seldom Seen Kid took home the Mercury Prize, Elbow earned platinum status in Britain. Even in the U.S., "Grounds for Divorce" and "One Day Like This" have shown up on TV (even if you were looking at George Clooney the whole time). So what happens now that more people have expectations of Elbow?A good part of what makes Elbow so beloved is they've always felt impervious to either trends or expectations. Singer Guy Garvey even admitted recently his life isn't providing grist for his typical lyrical gloom. Instead, on Build a Rocket Boys!, the band finds itself camping out in its childhood hometown and reminiscing about days gone by. If that sounds like a return to much-beloved Asleep in the Back closer "Scattered Black & Whites" or Leaders of the Free World's "Station Approach", that's true thematically. The gorgeous "Lippy Kids" harkens back to the Talk Talk spirituals of their early work, but what's remarkable about it is the totality of its lyrical warmth. Garvey avoids lionizing a specific time period, instead offering an empathetic survey of the banality and confusion of childhood-- two features of it that you never seem to outgrow. But sonically, Elbow continue down the narrow corridor they've established in recent years-- immaculately recorded and stripping away nearly every bit of ethereal studio magic. (It's hard to remember that they used to make records people could conceivably get high to.) It only sounds like rock music when they're going out of their way to announce it as such, as on stomping lead single "Neat Little Rows"....full text |
| Nme |
| Specificity in art is a sign of bravery. Anyone who obfuscates what they mean (either for lack of something to say or for fear of being taken to task) is not only a coward but probably not worthy of the tag ‘artist’ in the first place. This is one of many small but important details that inform Elbow’s fifth album and place them in a different league to other purveyors of ‘emotional atmospheric rock’. For example, Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida’ sounds impressive, but their songs might as well be about Chris Martin’s guilt over naming his children after fruit for all the lyrical clues we are given. Elbow’s first album since winning the Mercury Prize for ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ in 2008 is at the other end of the scale, rooted in the sublimely specific and the gloriously mundane. Songwriter Guy Garvey cements his position as the laureate of the everyday. If you’ve ever been chucked, realised that you miss your parents, or thought that you don’t see enough of your mates, then he has written a song that hits the heart of the matter with frightening resonance. He indulges his skill to deal with these universal themes with sheer generosity of spirit and freshness of perspective to a level that would see most become unacceptably whimsical or mawkish....full text |
| Louderthanwar |
| Craftily calling themselves ‘prog without the solos’ Elbow have carved out a uniquely English space for themselves that puts them far ahead of their peers. . Whereas the likes of Keane and Coldplay seemed to get bogged down in the Mcgee termed ‘bedwetting’ world leaving behind a soggy mattress of music Elbow wear their heart on their sleeves. And it works. They also make a highly imaginative music that is moving, on the new album, into darker and deeper territory becoming, like Massive Attack, an unlikely inheritor of the mantle of post punk. They are true experimenters of sound, unlike the usual clutch of modern post punk bands whose music is considered groundbreaking when it is actually a copy of groundbreaking music decades ago and not that genuinely original. Unlike Radiohead, whose latest album is yet another sonic adventure that you admire but feel emotionally detached from, Elbow make a music that resounds with the emotion stuff. In their slow gestation over several albums and eighteen years of frustration some of which were as critically acclaimed underdogs Elbow have managed to remain part of the fabric of a northern city. Instead of playing around with their sound like other bands who spent years on the fringes like Biffy Clyro and Snow Patrol and looking for the commercial edge they stayed true to themselves. They became stadium massive on the breakthrough Seldom Seen Kid that saw them become the biggest band in the UK by following their own instincts. Inserted of losing it the band went right back to their roots in Bury and north Manchester satellites- unfashionable towns that resonate with their own northern genius. and honed their sound down to its combination of stripped down sparse terrain and sweeping, melodramatic, orchestral swoops that are the perfect backdrop to Guy Garvey’s voice that conveys so much emotion and passion without ever cracking up. The splendidly titled Build A Rocket Boys is a further refining of this and from the opening, The Birds, seems determined to set its stall. Written and recorded again in Blueprint studios in the backstreets five minutes from Manchester’s city centre it truly is the sound of a city centre in the rain with the weight of history and that peculiar sombre northern undertow of melancholia that has been handed down through the generations of northern bands since Joy Division. Very much a band the Elbow team have been working towards this since they stumbled out of Bury in the early nineties with a hotch potch of influence from Nirvana to the surrounding baggy scene. They famously went down to Square One Studios in Bury in about 1991 to see if they could find the Stone Roses who were meant to be in there attempting to record the Second Coming. Elbow never made the same mistakes as their forbearers and their work ethic is splendid. Instead of relaxing on the kudos of The Seldom Seen Kid they have moved on and taken their sound into darker and even more stripped down place that oozes with the sadness of lost youth and carworn memories....full text |
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