Weekly > Reviews
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Well they’ve been round now for a number of years, and as Kev recently touched on, the Manchester lads have to be one of the most underrated bands this country has produced over the last decade, but who knows where the new long player may take them this time round, possibly mainstream acceptance. Probably not.
Opening track Starlings starts oddly like fanfare for the common man, only for Guy to be ushered in and sounding miffed off that Mr Brown hasn’t accepted an invitation from him, but then croons in pure elbow tradition ‘I guess I’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue’. Like a lot of Elbow stuff over the last three albums, this is heavy stuff that will make the hardest of men cry.
They’ve never been ones for the easy going stadium anthems of their peers Oasis and Coldplay, which is evident on the Bones Of You, but what they lose in lighter sales, they make up for in many other ways, as we’re advised of the problems of the pressure of the everyday world, with a formula one gypsey strum accompanying the journey.
However, like it’s predecessors Asleep In The Back and Great Expectations, Mirrorball is the standout track from the album, with a lushful production that never sounds compromised, and the heartbreaking but joyous ‘We took the town to town last night, We kissed like we invented it, and now I know what every step is for, to lead me to your door’. It’s when they pull of this type of depth that, you have to take your hat off to them and wonder how they do it without sounding crass.
Again recent single Grounds For Divorce, shows that there’s more than one trick to this pony, as the guitar riff tells any doubters these thirtysomething mancs can play as well as be the modern Keats and Shelley, and Audience For The Pope being beautifully dark and dirty.
Loneliness Of A Crane Tower Driver, has to be one of the best titles ever, which sidetracks me a bit, and ask myself what do you do if you need a shit and you’re a few hundred feet into the heavens. Sorry about that, urm yeah, another bit of class, and could have been edged onto any of the previous releases.
- Elbow
- The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)
- Category: Album
- Label: Polydor Records
- Reviewed by: Keachy
- Published on: 24 Mar 2008
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
Weblinks
Add to favouritesYou know you must be doing something right within the indie fraternity when Richard Hawley is dueting with you, and it’s on The Fix that the band go from emotional and soul mapping to sounding like two clergyman in a back street stage.
As there’s nobody currently out there that describe the human soul in all its glory as Elbow, I think it would be a crying shame if the rumours that this could be the last album are true, and although the chance of them either selling out five nights at Wembley or dropping Embrace a tune or two maybe slim, I still believe that they have a bigger part to play at some point.
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