Elbow The Seldom Seen Kid by: Ed Butler Mon:21-Apr-08 Label: Polydor Year: 2008 WB rating 89 out of 100

Elbow are the quiet, unassuming, overachieving older brother of the indie music scene. Their orchestral, ambitious brand of library-rock has, across the release of four albums over seven years, acted as a definitive lesson in mature creativity. That this sustained magnificence has not resulted in a flurry of recognition at the cash register to accompany the now obligatory critical stampede to be first to commend each release remains a crime of the highest order. And while The Seldom Seen Kid is, perhaps, their finest hour to date, it seems unlikely that this oversight is likely to be rectified any time soon.

There has always been a pervasive sense about Elbow’s music that it is much more the result of perspiration rather than inspiration; that, being the bunch of undergraduates they started out as, they made music by the rules, creating magic by following those structures so rigorously that flaws were rarely evident. A string section here, a judiciously selected backing vocal there, Elbow crafted songs, slowly and purposefully, flashes of brilliance the result of meticulous planning.

As such, The Seldom Seen Kid demonstrates that Elbow have, if nothing else, learned with each successive release ways to improve that songcraft, building onto their already bulging repertoire with flourishes tossed in to accompany the ever-growing list of genres at their beck and call. On their 2001 debut, Asleep in the Back, this musical range failed to extend far beyond undergraduate gloom-rock with an epic bent, Radiohead’s slightly dour younger sibling. By 2003’s opus Cast of Thousands, the art-noise/jazz lounge grooves of ‘I’ve Got Your Number’ and the gospel choir of ‘Ribcage’ evidenced their growing ambitions. In 2006, Leaders of the Free World, while introducing a more robust form of Freud-quoting pub rock, they shifted the lyrical focus from the personal to the political, with dashes of Salsa (‘Mexican Standoff’) and a growing appreciation of effects, each time never abandoning what they have incorporated in the past, but artfully adding onto an already comprehensive whole.

This, the latest effort, sees Elbow incorporating electronica (‘Starlings’) and flamenco guitar (‘The Bones of You’), while retaining a little bit of everything that was Elbow in the past. Highlights are almost too numerous to mention, short of posting the tracklisting in its totality, but the sweeping strings on ‘Mirrorball’ and the driving rock of opening single ‘Grounds for Divorce’ are standouts.

In fact, ‘Grounds for Divorce’ is far and away the album’s most immediate moment, the pounding bass drum and wordless vocal hook (if only merely typing whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-woo could convey how thrilling it sounds) demanding instant attention. However, it is the absence of this immediacy across much of the rest of the album’s eleven tracks which is perhaps its greatest strength. With each successive listen, new treasures unveil themselves; the gentle piano underpinning the close of ‘The Fix’, which, incidentally, features guest performer Richard Hawley, the lifting of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ on ‘Bones of You’, the magnificent strings gluing together the pop-for-seniors of ‘One Day Like This’.

‘Weather to Fly’ has all the hallmarks of a horribly bland 80s ballad, but gloriously transcends any triteness with gorgeous strings, booming yet sparse rhythms, and Garvey’s rarely heard, but soulful and heartfelt falsetto. And when the understated grandiosity of the horn section wafts over the top, the wonderment is complete.

The band’s bookishness manifests itself most prominently in frontman Guy Garvey’s hyper-intellectual words, and on The Seldom Seen Kid he hits new heights of bittersweet lyricism. “How dare the Premier ignore my invitations/He’ll have to go/So too the bunch he luncheons with” opens ‘Starlings’, apparently Garvey’s acknowledgment of the band’s quasi also-ran status among the British indie scene. When he chooses to enter his more familiar, moribund mode, he utters “You pulled apart my theory with a disinterested sigh”, his oh-so careworn voice sounding as though it is emerging from underwater. But by the end of the song, his heretofore unrewarded talent in creating poetry dedicated to the ache of love is unveiled in all its glory as he croons “I’ll be quiet and confessional/The violets explode inside me when I meet your eyes/Then I’m spinning and I’m diving like a cloud of starlings/Darling is this love?” Wow. And bear in mind that this all takes place on the opening track, the blasts of brass providing added bombast and winsomeness simultaneously.

‘The Fix’ is a dose of requisite northern England charm, with Garvey and Hawley fighting out a ‘who can be the most quaintly appealing Mancunian’ competition. Racing pigeons even score a mention, but the incredibly charming melody of the chorus thoroughly squashes any churlishness one might feel at the overarching Britishness of it all.

But it is on album closer ‘Friend of Ours’ that Elbow prove their true worth. A tribute to close friend of the band, Manchester musician Brian Glancy, it is a study in masculine friendship and grief, with lyrics so moving it is worth reprinting them in their entirety. “Before leaving get to the bar/No one round here makes you pay/Never very good at goodbyes/So (gentle shoulder charge) Love you mate/Salford skyline blue/Always you/Could fly round the corner/’Til you do, love you mate.” As it is sung, strings swell, and eyes moisten. Elbow remain understated, undervalued and overachieving. This is a stunning album.