God I used to love them so much, and still have a great fondness for them. Asleep In The Back is probably my favourite album by anyone ever. I feel a bit embarrassed saying that, because itâs Elbow. But itâs just so creepy and beautiful and bruised and it just has such a mood. And it feels incredibly nostalgic to me. They havenât topped that, but theyâve consistently released great songs (if not always great albums), and Garvey really does have a wonderful way with words, eyes aside. I think Switching Off is absolutely stunning - I sang that to my wife on our wedding day (much to her embarrassment).
I think they lost their way a bit with Build A Rocket Boys, but thereâs been lots to love on everything since. Iâm glad theyâve stopped aiming for the Radio 2 playlist (or maybe theyâve just made it less obvious) because they can do moody really well, and I much prefer that to stuff like One Day Like This.
Theyâre not as good as they were on their first two albums, which is understandable really. And sometimes they feel a bit smug. But then they do something like This Blue World or Weightless and everythingâs ok again. Theyâre one of those bands that will always be close to my heart, and are a true comfort. 5
They seem like a decent bunch of lads and there is clearly some talent there, but I find them a very disappointing band. The first album is really good and there are glimpses of something decent thereafter but I feel that they are band ruined by the bit of success they have had.
Too often they seem to settle for the what they find easy to do and what the public like - the swelling anthemic chorus, the bland platitudinous lyric, the syrupy overwhelming string arrangement- instead of doing something more interesting. Everything just ends up a bit bland and tasteful like a magnolia wall in a show home.
I like this a lot more than I expected so Iâve upped my score to a 2. Itâs still not really for me. His vocal style/voice isnât my favourite and - hard to explain - but this sort of album is one I find very hard to get through: 12 songs spread over an hour with generally slower tempos. I donât really know why as I can easily get through a long album like Life Your Skinny Fists, but this sort of covers all bands doing songs like this. Even OK Computer feels surprisingly âfullâ when I come back to it now and Iâve never really got on with Hail To The Thief for the same reason.
never been into that kind of sound on record. havenât listened closely but tended to think about elbow as a good version of that general rock song thing, which doesnât do much for me.
saw them at the bataclan because a friend of the girl i was staying with was playing the flute with them or something. it was ok. i canât really remember anything about it, except that strange kind of feeling that you get when people around you are dead into it and are clearly getting a lot out of these songs, and youâre not.
Itâs impossible to be entirely objective about any kind of music, but I think this band in particular I really struggle with, because the period of my life I got into them, their understated emotion, ability to wring pathos from the minutae of everyday life and the devastating peaks and troughs of their better albums speak to me like few really do. When somebody says theyâre boring itâs like theyâre saying to me Iâm boring, and fair enough maybe I am a boring grumpy bastard from the Greater Manchester area, but there is a band that at their very best (Scattered Black and Whites, Great Expectations, My Sad Captains) can entirely get into my soul and bring tears to my eyes, and that band is Elbow.
I drifted away from them post TSSK, where it seemed like theyâd become one of those bands that produced one or two great songs in amongst a lot of dross that werenât worth paying much attention to, but actually their last album is as neat and flab-free as I think theyâve ever produced, Weightless and My Trouble are great songs.
Comparisons to Coldplay (and most of Dovesâ output tbh) are flatly incorrect and seemingly based mostly on One Day Like This and a couple of their other singles. Coldplay deal with feeling so generalised and bombastic it resembles nothing so much as an email from a company telling you how much you mean to them. Garvey coaxes meaning out of idle thoughts and memory, captures moments when your throat actually aches, anchoring raw emotion with warmth and humour, worked into often intricate arrangements. I can understand why people donât care for Elbow but if you think the two are the same you arenât a friend of mine.
100% this. He doesnât always get it right, and every now and then crosses the line to mawkish, but when he hits that sweet spot itâs absolutely glorious.