ELBOW: “The Seldom Seen Kid” ambitious and radio-worthy
PERFORMER: Elbow (www.elbow.co.uk)
RECORDING: “The Seldom Seen Kid” (Fiction/Geffen)
England’s Elbow has had both a charmed and cursed existence, creating beautifully interesting records for what now amounts to something like five major labels. Soldiering on, Guy Garvey and company have cast another set of tunes that combine ambitious arrangements and musicianship with radio-worthy melodies.
“Starlings” begins with a sparse love song that contains exquisite lines like “You are the only thing in any room you’re ever in” and “Yes, I’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue — and nothing else.”
Both “The Bones of You” and “Mirrorball” recall the smart, expansive pop of XTC circa “Black Sea” while the combination of Garvey’s raspy, ethereal voice, and the heady mix of percussion and acoustic guitar in “Grounds For Divorce” is hypnotic. And when the songs kicks in full-on with modal droning a la Zeppelin, it becomes almost mind-bending.
The slinky, minor-keyed “An Audience With the Pope” is simply a perfect marriage of music, lyrics and melody. If you can find me a better line than, “I have an audience with the pope and I’m saving the world at 8. But if she says she needs me … everybody’s gonna have to wait,” I’d like to hear it.
“The Fix,” in its own quirky way, is a melding of classic pop, Bertolt Brecht and the show tunes of Anthony Newley. And the fully orchestrated “One Day Like This” is as uplifting (if not fatalistic) as some of the other tunes are dark.
If the booklet is laid out like a program for a play, there’s good reason. The songs paint unusually rich pictures that create images as vivid as a novel.
– By Michael Lipton
