Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 17/03/08
Label: Fiction

If there's anyone out there still naïve enough to imagine that nobility lies in being criminally under-rated, generally overlooked and widely misjudged, then Elbow would surely put them straight quick smart. Dismissive potential fans - who for some reason have often linked them with the "soaring, epic pop" likes of the unforgivably wussy Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Athlete et al - are not alone in giving short shrift to the Manchester-based five piece, who once famously suffered the indignity of being dropped by two different record labels in 12 months. They're now signed to Fiction, their fourth major label paymaster in seven years.

Not that any of this chronic unfairness has impacted negatively on Elbow. Lesser bands would probably develop a chip on their shoulder the depth of the Grand Canyon and nurse it like a badge of honour, letting disgruntlement seep slowly into their songs until they became so bitter and twisted as to be unlistenable. Elbow, it seems, merely shrugged, smiled the sweet smile of the philosophically resigned and carried on making their superlative orchestral rock cum contemporary northern soul.

After dipping their toes into political waters with 2004's "Cast Of Thousands", they return to the personal with "The Seldom Seen Kid", the title an affectionate reference to the band's friend, Manchester singer-songwriter Bryan Glancey, who died in 2006. It's a(nother) huge-hearted, soft-pawed, gentle giant of an album, redolent of Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt, Ralph Vaughn Williams, The Blue Nile and Eric Matthews, but is by no means as forlorn or uniformly subdued as those names might suggest.

Lead single, "Grounds For Divorce" - which features the best opening line of any pop song in recent history ("I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce") - kicks a serious amount of arse, its stomping, chain-gang groove and sexy blues swing suggesting Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan" booted into the '00s. "The Fix" - part Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau, part Rodgers & Hart - plays even more against type, with Richard Hawley and scruffily soulful Elbow main man, Guy Garvey appearing in Runyon-esque mode as con men plotting a racing scam.

Elsewhere, "Mirrorball" is full of gorgeous glissades that underline the impossibly affecting, feminised grace of Garvey's voice and "One Day Like This" rolls out an exultant, almost fulsome, bright blue-sky assurance that really, no matter how gloomy you might feel, a lovely day can put an altogether better complexion on things. If anyone else voiced such sentiments, you'd rightly want to reach into the stereo and slap them hard, but that Elbow make the affirmation ring touchingly true is a testament to their sweet sincerity and principled candour.

    by Sharon O'Connell