đŸŽ” How Good Are They Really đŸŽ” Elbow

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 it’s Elbow. But it’s just so creepy and beautiful and bruised and it just has such a mood. And it feels incredibly nostalgic to me. They haven’t topped that, but they’ve 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 there’s been lots to love on everything since. I’m glad they’ve stopped aiming for the Radio 2 playlist (or maybe they’ve just made it less obvious) because they can do moody really well, and I much prefer that to stuff like One Day Like This.

They’re 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 everything’s ok again. They’re one of those bands that will always be close to my heart, and are a true comfort. 5

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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.

Would like to see a histogram of the votes in this thread.

My ex had an affair with the bass player
 was pretty tedious and heartbreaking at the time but I’m over it now :+1:
5 because I’m not bitter


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this has got to be the most magnanimous HGATR vote I’ve seen yet

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top band

4 for me; really hard to pick a fave album but plumped for the ‘big’ one

outside of ol’ blighty, i don’t “one day like this” had the same level of cultural ubiquity - it’s just another fab elbow song

Okay, giving AITB another try.

(Although I have no decried them as boring but they’re certainly not a band that have ever excited me in the past.)

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I like this a lot more than I expected so I’ve upped my score to a 2. It’s still not really for me. His vocal style/voice isn’t 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 don’t 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 ‘full’ when I come back to it now and I’ve never really got on with Hail To The Thief for the same reason.

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How many Bulgarian sea-shanties can you handle on a Sunday morning?

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never been into that kind of sound on record. haven’t listened closely but tended to think about elbow as a good version of that general rock song thing, which doesn’t 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 can’t 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 you’re not.

would have loved to have seen him around then, it’s last of the country gentlemen time isn’t it, love that album

oh wait, i’m at least half a decade out. i take it back

It’s 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 they’re boring it’s like they’re saying to me I’m 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 they’d become one of those bands that produced one or two great songs in amongst a lot of dross that weren’t worth paying much attention to, but actually their last album is as neat and flab-free as I think they’ve ever produced, Weightless and My Trouble are great songs.

Comparisons to Coldplay (and most of Doves’ 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 don’t care for Elbow but if you think the two are the same you aren’t a friend of mine.

Knocking a point off for their pianist. 4.

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That throw those curtains wide song is an actual affront to music.

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You’re an actual affront to music.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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That is also true.

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Children In Need - Peter Kay's Animated All Star Band on Vimeo you will love the end to this then

Agreed

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You need to up your game dude. You’ve got a lot to live up to after the Stone Roses debacle!

100% this. He doesn’t always get it right, and every now and then crosses the line to mawkish, but when he hits that sweet spot it’s absolutely glorious.

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