Elbow - "Build a Rocket Boys!" - Album Review

The weight of expectation weighed heavy on Elbow’s shoulders for this album. They stole the nation's hearts in 2008 with The Seldom Seen Kid marrying critical and commercial success in a way which even the most cynical couldn’t sneer at. I discovered them through that album and investigated their previous three. Each one is phenomenally gorgeous. The Seldom Seen Kid was subtly different in a lot of ways from previous efforts. It opened up a more organic sound from the band, forgoing the delicate electronic blips and guitar whirls of previous albums.

So where could the band go? They'd fulfilled the underdog dream, what now? What could they sing about? Frontman and lyricist Guy Garvey himself stated "...when heartbreaking melancholia is your currency, success and contentment can be a problem". There were plenty fearing that the band would stray into Coldplay/U2 territory. What they've actually done is made their most intimate and nuanced record to date.

The album opens with "The Birds" - a shifting, whirling 8 minuter which belies any fears about commercialisation. The instrumentation of the track signals a trend which runs throughout the album, which is that the Elbow boys are further nurturing their prog-rock/post-rock tendencies. This has been a key part of their sound for years, originating from a love of Genesis, Talk Talk, Pink Floyd and Radiohead. When you post reviews as a normal listener rather than a professional critic, you have time to read plenty of other reviews before your own goes up. Lots I've read have commented on how most of the band seem to take more of a step back in favour of Garvey’s vocals. I think that's a criminal misreading - the rest of the band are at their most spry and involved, nursing their creative post-rock tendencies throughout. Being subtle doesn’t mean they’re not involved.

The opener is followed by "Lippy Kids" - the first track unveiled on Boxing Day. It's stunning and draws us right into the lyrical theme of the album - reflecting on your youth. Garvey looks on affectionately at a bunch of hoodies hanging round on a corner, nostalgic for his own days there. Some of his best lyrics to date drift effortlessly out of his mouth as he croons "the cigarette senate was everything then" and grins over how he "never perfected that simian stroll".

This is followed by the euphoric orchestral pop of "With Love". Built on handclaps, rows of backing vocals and an almost cheeky bounces and stabs from the bass and piano, this is an album track that stands up as strong as anything else here. Placing Garvey against the backing vocals highlights the aura that he's always given off that makes you feel as if you'd follow him into the darkest depths of Salford and back - and you would when he can sing about dentures and make it sound so glorious.

"Neat Little Rows" is the anthemic, stomping lead single - this album's "Grounds For Divorce". It's followed swiftly by the album's glorious centrepiece "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl". This is one of Elbow's rare truly acoustic moments, and Garvey definitely takes centre stage on this one. Listing fragmented images and memories from his early twenties, it bowls you over how he can put equal gravitas on the words "forty five CDs" as he does "nothing to be proud of and nothing to regret". The glistening cherry on the cake is the expertly placed, slightly off kilter keyboard stabs of Craig Potter.

Just when you thought the band might be slipping into lullabies, "The Night Will Always Win" gives way to the jazzy swagger of "High Ideals". They've got a surprising penchant for jazzy swagger do Elbow. Comes with the Mancunian territory I guess. They one-up many of their un-evolved, knuckle dragging Mancunian contemporaries (naming no names) however with the beautiful horn section and atonally inspired guitar chimes that lace this track. Elbow have displayed time and time again their ability to perfectly articulate male emotion without sounding crass or forced. The Seldom Seen Kid was a tribute to the band's friend Bryan Glancy, who died suddenly in 2008. Moments on that album capture male friendship in a way that I honestly wouldn't have thought was possible. The band continue to paint a nuanced, trembling picture of male emotion on this record as they look back on their pasts.

Not to suggest that they haven't got more heart bursting anthems up their sleeve. "Open Arms" is glorious and colossal without ever sounding overblown and hollow. The twinkles of piano, mandolin and strings all swell up around Garvey as he belts "WE'VE GOT OPEN ARMS FOR BROKEN HEARTS, LIKE YOURS MY BOY, COME HOME AGAIN!" It's the kind of thing that makes you want to run back home to all those faces from your past and tell them how much you love them. The bass thuds in the bridge will hit you in the pit of your stomach like a mallet, inducing that trembling, overwhelming joy and love of home that shakes makes you feel worryingly small in the big, grown-up world.

After an eerie reprise of "The Birds", the album bids au revoir with the ballad "Dear Friends". Garvey's lyrics are at colloquially elegant best - "Dear friends, you are angels and trumps, you are magi". It plays the album out like the final, drunken, heartfelt goodbyes at a wedding. When you're overwhelmed with sadness and joy in equal, teary eyed measure. All the faces you've known and loved and built your life on surround you and you can't even articulate the swelling in your chest. Knowing you've just experienced something indescribably beautiful. A landmark. Maybe not for the universe or the rest of the world. But for you. Your world. Your heart.

Elbow - "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" and "Neat Little Rows"

I won't try to up my indie cred by pretending that I had heard of Elbow before they released The Seldom Keen Kid in 2008. I was a little too young to have done so but, like so many people, I feel in love with them. I went off ASAP and bought all of their albums and they are now, inarguably, one of my favourite bands.

Their forthcoming album Build a Rocket Boys! is one of the albums I'm most excited about for this year, and I've written a couple of posts over the past few months about the few things that they've revealed.

Well here, first of all is a live performance of their new song "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" - apparently a highlight from the album, from the reviews I've read. It's as beautifully Elbow like as ever. The lyrics and vocals sound wise and sentimental, the rhythms soft and restrained, the broken piano parts punctuating gently every now and then with breath taking precision. Here it is:



Also, here's their lead single, "Neat Little Rows". It's Elbow at their anthemic best - thumping bass, a piano riff with the size and power of a whale riding a double decker bus through your bedroom wall and Guy Garvey belting it out as if his life depends on it. He has a stunning knack for combining his own words and common, every day turns of phrase - "neat little rows". The album's all about nostalgia for their youth and life at home, inspired by moving back into the parts of Manchester they grew up in. It bowls me over and make me grin to hear Guy asking for his bones to get laid down their "in cobblestones" or "in neat little rows", just like the houses back where he lives. One of the greatest living lyricists, without a doubt.



Also, click here to watch their appearance on this week's edition of The Culture Show. It runs from around the 18 minute mark to 24 minutes. Enjoy!

Elbow - "Lippy Kids"

I received some rather nice gifts over Christmas and I hope you did to. However, possibly the best thing I've received from anyone over the past 72 hours has been the unveiling of a new track from one of the world's greatest bands - Elbow.

I was sat on the sofa, late Boxing Day morning, in my pants and dressing gown, twiddling my thumbs whilst cleaning up went on around me when I decided to check on t'internet to see if anything had been going on in the musical world, and I literally squeaked a little bit when I saw that Elbow had unveiled the first song from their recently named upcoming album Build A Rocket Boys! - the follow up to 2008's massive crossover success The Seldom Seen Kid. The song is titled "Lippy Kids" and well, here it is:



Now if you don't find that stunningly beautiful then either:
a) listen to it again, or
b) ask Santa for a soul next Christmas

Having become a massive fan of the whole of Elbow's back catalogue (I'll admit I hadn't heard of them until they released "Grounds for Divorce" as a single, but I investigated and fell in love with them before they rose to success, so my indie cred it kept in tact folks) I was incredibly worried that after the massive success they experienced with The Seldom Seen Kid, they would compromise their sound somehow. When they stated recently that they'd written this album with big venues in mind, my insides became a little more wary. But I kept faith. And I was right to do so.

Gosh this song is beautiful. Lyrically, it's classic Guy Garvey. Eloquent yet colloquial, wise yet human, restrained yet emotional. "Lippy Kids" finds Garvey watching a bunch of youths messing around on street corners and, rather than criticise or have a go like many others would, or delve into his remembered teenage fears and try to warn the kids a la Arcade Fire on The Suburbs, he just stands and admires them from afar, as someone who clearly lived the exact same way years ago. He wonders mildly "do they know those days are golden?", putting him at a mature and wistful adult distance, and then lovingly and with a sly grin in his voice imparts a golden pearl of wisdom - "build a rocket boys".

That's such a beautiful lyric. It's Guy Garvey, of course it bloody is, but still. "Build a rocket boys". He's telling these kids to live beautiful, aspirational lives. And that last word "boys" just brings him so close to them, let's you know that Garvey is singing as a greying, aging man of experience.

Musically, one could argue that it's not exactly the "arena sound" that they'd mentioned. It's only one song, and the rest of the album could sound different, but I think this could fit in an arena. Or a pub. A phonebox. A street corner, seeing as that's where it's set. The music never runs away and crescendos, escalating into a massive chorus - but you don't have to be singing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" to fill an arena. This song's an exercise in restraint. Garvey never runs up to these kids and tells them what he thinks. He maintains a respectful distance, but the feeling swells in his chest, huge and beautiful like a pair of wings, one of those beautiful things that remains forever unsaid. It's similar in a way to Arcade Fire on The Suburbs - lyrically but also musically. There's a tendency among indie fans to love bands who make music that sounds majestic and massive, but to then recoil when that music is put into a massive venue like Wembley or the O2. But that's pure indie snobbery. I saw Elbow at Wembley in March 2008, at the height of their new popularity. They were stunning and when I reflect on that gig, it made me realise something. That's a massive venue and it was pretty much full. And yet it was such a personal experience for me as I got to see a band I had fallen in love with. Their music possesses a quality that is the key to great pop music - it has universal appeal but at the same time strikes a personal chord which makes that music immediately becomes yours.

Elbow are a band for Wembley Arena as well as dirty suburban street corners in Bury. And hopefully they'll prove that again in 2011.

Build a Rocket Boys!