Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid
Elbow's fourth album proves the importance of the LP format.
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Friday, 14, Mar 2008 09:02
Polydor, out March 17th.
In a nutshell.
Autobiographical poetry of love and loss
What's it all about?
Elbow's fourth album opens with Starlings, and a disarming burst of tuning up before miniscule glockenspiel heartbeats are punctuated by a horn section signalling intent. Rather wonderfully, it's got the air of waking on a beautiful Sunday morning, with one's head mercifully clear. We're transported to another time with the sunny Spanish rhythms of The Bones of You, before the string-laden ballad regrettably plods rather than envelops.
Lead single Grounds For Divorce bursts in with a bluesy swagger and a refrain that seems drenched in scotch and Mancunian rain. It's unsettling at first as it's so at odds with the sombre, gentle facets of Elbow's work until a mournful chorus reveals Guy Garvey can still be as melancholic as the best of them. Audience with the Pope seems like a northern Bond theme thanks to its ominous strings and though Weather to Fly does reveal that Guy's had a bit of a listen to Staralfur by Sigur Ros, it's still beautifully subtle and slow-building.
Garvey shows his lyrics are still superbly vicarious, vicious and vivid on Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver before The Fix, a duet with fellow northern troubadour Richard Hawley that carries with it a feel of the down at heel reaching a last chance saloon.
Some Riot bewitches with its piano before the chirpy, hopeful and lovelorn One Day Like This can't help but provoke a grin at the wondrous joy of a soaring, MGM string section.
And fittingly, Friend of Ours closes the album with a touching tribute to Richard Glancy, the Seldom Seen Kid of the title and a Manchester singer-songwriter who died last year. There won't be a dry eye in the house.
Who's it by?
Resolutely northern, Elbow formed when frontman Guy Garvey met guitarist Mark Potter while at sixth form college, (though they didn't adopt the name until 1997). Rapturously received EPs at the close of the 20th century preceded the Mercury-nominated debut Asleep in the Back in 2001, with the "I'll be the corpse in your bathtub" darkness of Newborn announcing Garvey as a unique British lyricist. Second album Cast of Thousands was drenched with romance while centrepiece Grace Under Pressure featured a Glastonbury crowd crying along with the Bush-baiting line "we still believe in love, so f**k you". The five-piece self-produced their third album Leaders of the Free World while their Live Lounge cover of Independent Woman memorably sound-tracked a rathergood.com sketch of flatcap-clad kittens.
As an example.
"You are the only thing in any room you're ever in/I'm stubborn, selfish and too old." - Starlings
"The fix is in, the snaps of the stewards so candid/The fix is in, yes our pigeons have finally landed" - The Fix
"Throw those curtains open wide/One day like this a year will see me right." - One Day Like This
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Well, it's Elbow. So the critical response will be gushing, the hardcore fans will lap it up and mainstream recognition will almost certainly remain out of reach. Grounds for Divorce is expected to go top 20 this week, which'll do for Garvey and co presumably. Let Coldplay take the awards for navel-gazing indie, Elbow can earn the respect the hard way.
What the others say
"Garvey's voice is what most distinguishes Elbow, its sweet and scruffy soulfulness projecting real empathy and lyrical wit. 'I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce,' he sings in the single Grounds For Divorce. It's surely one of the best opening lines of any pop song in years - and typical of a record that shows Elbow at the top of their game." - Sharon O'Connell, Uncut
"Those who find Elbow drab will still probably be unmoved by this Talk Talk-inspired band's latest. But for everyone else who likes to be moved, relaxed, and cheered by superior, soulful Mancunian lullabies, The Seldom Seen Kid is essential." - Lou Thomas, BBC
So is it any good?
Deceptively so. It meanders and muddles along like every other album, and while moments like Grounds For Divorce and Weather To Fly are exemplary portraits of a band whose skill only increases with each album, it never feels like an album that will astonish. Until the end.
One Day Like This has an uplifting quiver and is this album's equivalent to Grace Under Pressure, set for thousands-strong singalongs at this summer's festivals. As its defiant, sun-worshipping refrain powers the song that you realise you've just drunk in a superbly-rendered, hugely affecting and undeniably heartfelt piece of work. The cinematic feel of the closing Friend of Ours elicits a lump in the throat and you realise that from its startling opening, through its sprightly mid-section to its mournful close that this has been an all-encompassing experience. Garvey might have seemed curmudgeonly for his recent claims that iTunes should stop selling singles, but a listen to The Seldom Seen Kid in its entirety reveals that the album still is, and should indeed be preserved as an art form.
8/10
Lewis Bazley