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Elbow |
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Artist:
Elbow
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now", "Ribcage" and "Station Approach", "Starlings" opens their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid rising from a bed of tumbling electronic subtlety like a depressed Atari game loading up, adding bare touches of piano, glimpses of ambient guitar, out of body background vocals, an understated pulse and a wisp of strings, before--EXCELSIS!--a fanfare avalanche of horns crashes the gate and elevates things to gasping palatial heights, before Guy Garvey's inimitable gravel tone and wrenchingly poetic reinterpretations of the everyday announce their arrival proper. It's astonishing, by far the most progressive moment on the album and if anything it sets the bar too high. But even when the pace dips, and songs like "Mirrorball" and "Weather to Fly" don't distinguish themselves quite enough, their textural peerlessness remains. This is a beautiful sounding record. Their collaboration with Richard Hawley may be more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty, but the highs, the riffing cross-stitch of "Ground for Divorce", the desolate grandeur of "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" and the enlightened string-laden anthem "On a Day Like This" (like their own Sound of Music--only substitute the Alpine peaks for a Manchester high-rise) number amongst the best of their career. --James Berry
 uncovered gems, 2008-11-06
Sorry to say I had never even heard of Elbow until I caught them on TV at this years Glastonbury.
Liked what I heard and bought the album (before they won the Mercury prize I hasten to add)
Was completely blown away by it. Have since invested in their back catalogue which have been equally impressive. All are highly recommended
It has certainly restored my interest in music .
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List Price: £16.99
Our Price: £7.75
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Artist:
Elbow
An astonishingly intense and ambitious album, Elbow's Cast of Thousands is relentlessly experimental. Having toiled for 10 years over their spellbinding Mercury-nominated debut Asleep in the Back, the maverick Bury five-piece--who were initially hailed as the new Radiohead--have produced a worthy sequel in a comparatively short two years. While mirroring their debut's melancholy tone, this album's romantic lyricism and uplifting harmonies inject a fresh dynamic. From the first bar, Cast of Thousands is enthralling. "Ribcage", an exquisite rousing treasure, builds on a languorous and fragmented melody into a cohesive climax while Garvey listlessly intones (with a flat mic taped to his larynx) the charming mantra, "When the sunshine/ throwing me a lifeline/ finds its way in to my room/ all I need is you". Meanwhile, the London Community Gospel choir's spiralling harmonies echo Blur's "Tender" in its lo-fi, mellifluous majesty. But the majority of the album is far less grandiose with the haunting "Snooks (Progress Report)" and "I've Got Your Number" bristling with an unnerving intimacy and brooding dialogue. It's an enchanting return that finds Elbow stretching from despair to lovelorn tenderness. --Christopher Barrett
Elbow show they have grace under pressure, 2004-07-13
After Asleep in the Back, an album that took years to create and release, Elbow must have felt the strain when asked to make a follow-up in a much shorter timespace. However, the pressure seems to have worked well as they have made a brilliant second album that shows just how talented these guys are.The great thing about this album is its layers: Elbow really have a thing for attention to detail. All the tracks add layer upon layer to create amazing soundscape-like masterpieces that are at once catchy and melodic. The experimentalism on this album is also catchy. Everything from the offbeat, sometimes jazzy sometimes just odd drumming to the quiet piano, repetitive guitar sounds, melodic offbeat bass and giant gospel choirs just seems to work well together. This is partly due to great production by Ben Hillier & Elbow and partly due to the band's creativity. The good thing too is that the album still retains the dark, melancholy feel of the first album; it just achieves it in slightly different ways. This experimental feel just blows other bands out of the water. But it's not just the music that's great. The lyrics are what make the music still feel human. Guy Garvey adds wit and romanticism to every song, and his Peter Gabriel-like voice just adds to this feel. "Lost in a lullaby, side of the road, melt in a melody, slide in a solitude". Beautiful. Some people say this album is more uplifting than the last, and, while that is true to an extent, the constant darkness of the first album is still here which is what I love. You just love the fact that the band are moody and unhappy, and they can't get enough of it themselves either. That's what makes this album work. So, in conclusion: great layered structure, unusual musicianship, brilliant lyricism, great production, curiously unhappy but uplifting feel... what more do you want? These guys are the future of rock music, so buy them now. And congrats to Elbow for making such an amazing record in a much shorter space of time.
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List Price: £5.99
Our Price: £3.58
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Artist:
Elbow
GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE, 2008-05-19
THIS IS THE ONLY MUSIC I CAN SAY I HAVE HEARD FROM ELBOW, AND IT IS GREAT. I AM 60 YEARS YOUNG AND A KEEN FAN OF A BROAD SPECTRUM OF MUSIC. IF THIS IS THE STANDARD PRODUCED BY ELBOW I WILL BE BUYING THEIR MUSIC SOON! IS THIS SINGLE FROM ONE OF THEIR ALBUMS?
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List Price: £4.99
Our Price: £3.89
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Artist:
Elbow
Leaders of the Free World, Elbow's third album, sees the band try to beat down their major league contemporaries (Coldplay, Doves) with a more ambitious set of songs. In truth, they didn't need to try so hard; Elbow have arguably been making better and more interesting music than most of their mainstream compadres since they formed in 1990. That said, the results here are undoubtedly impressive and may form the band's best work yet. Beginning with the beautiful, slow-building "Station Approach", and ending with the short but touching "Puncture Repair", Leaders of the Free World takes in an a host of minor classics along the way. From the captivating strums of "Picky Bugger" and the sonorous chimes of "The Stop" to the massively captivating title track and the funereal waltz of "Great Expectations", the record's elliptical nature only adds to its enchanting qualities. If this doesn't confirm Elbow's status as superior musicians/arrangers and underline Guy Garvey's abilities as a master storyteller, nothing will. --Paul Sullivan
"These feelings belong in a zoo...", 2007-06-08
I don't know how to do this album justice. It is breathtakingly beautiful, with Mr Garvey seemingly effortlessly finding poetry in the everyday. Finding the cast of a wedding ceremony on the last bus home (great expectations), giving the best description of a bouncer you'll ever hear (forget myself) or drunkenly falling for a random girl in a bar (imagined affair). The whole album feels like a story and its one I don't tire of. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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List Price: £5.99
Our Price: £3.24
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Artist:
Elbow
While it's tempting to position Elbow next to the sardonic likes of Badly Drawn Boy--mainly because of their proximity to the city of Manchester and their way with an acoustic guitar--Asleep In The Back, their frighteningly competent debut album, bears not the joker's smile. Instead, it comes straight from Manchester's simmering, ugly dark side--eleven tracks of rain-sodden misery, blown up into the breed of gracefully elegiac fatalism that once formed the essence of the likes of Joy Division. The foggy psychedelic swirl and sewer-deep dub basslines might recall the prog-rock indulgences of Radiohead, but Elbow's grievances are unmistakably aired from the far end of a dole queue; "Any Day Now" veritably fidgets with small town frustration, lead singer Guy Garvey--a man with the voice of an angel and the face of a brickie--hissing "Any day now/ How's about getting out of this place/ Anyways?" over and over, a mantra of desperation. Should we take it as a given that Elbow will break out of this rut of depression and despair? Asleep In The Back is good enough to suggest so. But then, Asleep In The Back also knows that fate can be awfully cruel. --Louis Pattison
Elbow - Asleep in the Back, 2005-01-11
If you like this genre of music, it is an essential purchase.
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List Price: £5.99
Our Price: £2.73
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Artist:
Elbow
While it's tempting to position Elbow next to the sardonic likes of Badly Drawn Boy--mainly because of their proximity to the city of Manchester and their way with an acoustic guitar--Asleep in the Back, their frighteningly competent debut album, bears not the joker's smile. Instead, it comes straight from Manchester's simmering, ugly dark side--11 tracks of rain-sodden misery, blown up into the breed of gracefully elegiac fatalism that once formed the essence of the likes of Joy Division. The foggy psychedelic swirl and sewer-deep dub basslines might recall the prog-rock indulgences of Radiohead, but Elbow's grievances are unmistakably aired from the far end of a dole queue; "Any Day Now" veritably fidgets with small town frustration, lead singer Guy Garvey--a man with the voice of an angel and the face of a brickie--hissing "Any day now/ How's about getting out of this place/ Anyways?" over and over, a mantra of desperation. Should we take it as a given that Elbow will break out of this rut of depression and despair? Asleep in the Back is good enough to suggest so. But then, Asleep in the Back also knows that fate can be awfully cruel. --Louis Pattison
Elbow - Asleep in the Back, 2005-01-11
If you like this genre of music, it is an essential purchase.
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Our Price: £14.95
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Artist:
Elbow
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now", "Ribcage" and "Station Approach", "Starlings" opens their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid rising from a bed of tumbling electronic subtlety like a depressed Atari game loading up, adding bare touches of piano, glimpses of ambient guitar, out of body background vocals, an understated pulse and a wisp of strings, before--EXCELSIS!--a fanfare avalanche of horns crashes the gate and elevates things to gasping palatial heights, before Guy Garvey's inimitable gravel tone and wrenchingly poetic reinterpretations of the everyday announce their arrival proper. It's astonishing, by far the most progressive moment on the album and if anything it sets the bar too high. But even when the pace dips, and songs like "Mirrorball" and "Weather to Fly" don't distinguish themselves quite enough, their textural peerlessness remains. This is a beautiful sounding record. Their collaboration with Richard Hawley may be more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty, but the highs, the riffing cross-stitch of "Ground for Divorce", the desolate grandeur of "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" and the enlightened string-laden anthem "On a Day Like This" (like their own Sound of Music--only substitute the Alpine peaks for a Manchester high-rise) number amongst the best of their career. --James Berry
uncovered gems, 2008-11-06
Sorry to say I had never even heard of Elbow until I caught them on TV at this years Glastonbury.
Liked what I heard and bought the album (before they won the Mercury prize I hasten to add)
Was completely blown away by it. Have since invested in their back catalogue which have been equally impressive. All are highly recommended
It has certainly restored my interest in music .
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List Price: £9.99
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![The Seldom Seen Kid [VINYL]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xBTxzvJmL._SL160_.jpg "The Seldom Seen Kid [VINYL]")
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Artist:
Elbow
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now", "Ribcage" and "Station Approach", "Starlings" opens their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid rising from a bed of tumbling electronic subtlety like a depressed Atari game loading up, adding bare touches of piano, glimpses of ambient guitar, out of body background vocals, an understated pulse and a wisp of strings, before--EXCELSIS!--a fanfare avalanche of horns crashes the gate and elevates things to gasping palatial heights, before Guy Garvey's inimitable gravel tone and wrenchingly poetic reinterpretations of the everyday announce their arrival proper. It's astonishing, by far the most progressive moment on the album and if anything it sets the bar too high. But even when the pace dips, and songs like "Mirrorball" and "Weather to Fly" don't distinguish themselves quite enough, their textural peerlessness remains. This is a beautiful sounding record. Their collaboration with Richard Hawley may be more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty, but the highs, the riffing cross-stitch of "Ground for Divorce", the desolate grandeur of "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" and the enlightened string-laden anthem "On a Day Like This" (like their own Sound of Music--only substitute the Alpine peaks for a Manchester high-rise) number amongst the best of their career. --James Berry
uncovered gems, 2008-11-06
Sorry to say I had never even heard of Elbow until I caught them on TV at this years Glastonbury.
Liked what I heard and bought the album (before they won the Mercury prize I hasten to add)
Was completely blown away by it. Have since invested in their back catalogue which have been equally impressive. All are highly recommended
It has certainly restored my interest in music .
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List Price: £20.99
Our Price: £16.00
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Artist:
Elbow
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List Price: £4.99
Our Price: £2.87
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![Powder Blue [CD 2] [CD 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KKZCWXRAL._SL160_.jpg "Powder Blue [CD 2] [CD 2]")
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Artist:
Elbow
 More delicious than gravy soaked yorkshire puddings, 2001-07-16
I don't know how the news of this incredible band and this release made it to Canada, but it more than makes up for the scarlet feaver Europian explorers brought here centuries ago! This track is rhythmic and melodic gold. The clever combination of piano, electric guitar with thick, hearty revearb, lyrics, sax, piercing vocals and the sudden crashing conclusion make this my favourite track of the moment. The only lament, and the reason for the four stars is that this sweet melodic trip is cut off all too soon... "Please mommy, can't I have some more of that sweet Powder Blue candy...PLEASE?"
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List Price: £10.99
Our Price: £0.99
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