Elbow!!!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Never, however, has an influence been so in my face, but wow did the Scratch My Back experience influence them. This has recent Peter Gabriel all over it.

I saw this on Wikipedia:

The agenda, both thematically and musically, was set by "Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl," a minimalist, Eno-esque track based on Garvey's earlier poem he wrote about his first love. "I think our records have always had light and shade to a degree, this one more so than the others", commented Garvey. A couple of times, when struggling with lyrics, he made trips to Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire to "share thoughts" with its owner. On such occasions the frontman communicated via video calls with his band, which, on some occasions, had to place the laptop on top of the piano and play the latest versions of songs to virtual Garvey.

Crazy that the song that "set the mood" of the album is the one most of us dislike the most. :laugh:
 
I saw this on Wikipedia:

Crazy that the song that "set the mood" of the album is the one most of us dislike the most. :laugh:

Lemonmelon actually showed me that last night after I mentioned how much it sounded like Peter Gabriel.

I usually am not so good at picking out influences, that's why I'm so blown away by just how obvious this one is. Honestly, that's kind of cool in my book, we all know how much I love the GAB.
 
The middle part is pretty boring though and I hate the reprise of The Birds. What an awful voice that man has.

I got curious as to who exactly sang the reprise and found this:

To sing the reprise, Elbow hired an amateur, a piano tuner called John Mosley. "We wanted a man with a sweet but frail voice, and John got the job."

I reckon Mr Mosley should have stuck to being a piano tuner.
 
You would think his grasp of pitch would be a little better. Not sure I'd trust him to tune my piano either.
 
I'm struggling with this one, three listens in, and if there was one album release this year that I really wanted to like, it was BARB!

The Seldom Seen Kid was a masterpiece, so much so, that I'm personally tempted to rank it as the best album of the last decade. It's that brilliant.

Great Expectations maybe? The last album was always gonna be a hard act to follow.Hopefully this one will grow on me, but I'm not being mindblown like I was with TSSK.

Open Arms is the only track so far that I'm excited by, for some reason it reminds me of a Christmas carol. It's majestic, it's this album's One Day Like This. It's a fantastic listen throughout the song's entire course.

The River, The Birds, Lippy Kids and With Love are good.. Yet songs like Dear Friends, High Ideals and Jesus is A Rochdale Girl are pretty but don't seem to do much at all.

I need this to grow on me.. I love Elbow
 
1. Who cares

2. That review was more of a rambling career retrospective than anything else.
 
It's a good album but not great. It's not easy to follow the last album considering how good it was. I do like these songs:

The Birds
Lippy Kids
The River
Open Arms

To me the biggest disappointment by far was Duffy. I loved 6 or 7 off her first one but not even one in her sophomore record.
 
Oh, for serious. That second album was just heinous. And her first just doesn't hold up for me, even though I liked it well enough when it came out. Her voice is rather shrill, and without any catchy or even halfway decent songs behind it, it's nothing but a shrill voice, and you're left to wonder (as Popjustice so perfectly put it in their year-end wrap-up): remind us why we ever liked you?
 
I was very surprised and pleased to find out on Monday that the album was already released here. I thought we would get the same release date as the US.

I like this album, so who cares if it's not as good as their previous work, that doesn't make it a bad album.
 
Confession:

I tweeted Guy Garvey yesterday and asked if/when US tour dates were coming.

I hardly ever use Twitter to actually say something.

I wait with bated breath to see if the man with the swooniest voice alive will reply.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom