Album Profile: Elbow - build a rocket boys!

The opening track of this album, "The Birds", conjured an image of striding through a darkened castle, after the post-apocalyptic rave/party and come and gone, and nothing were left but the empty halls, filled with candlelight, wind-swept flyers littering the ground, and the moans of the derelicts left behind as the carnival went on its way to the next nether region. This album has the musical feeling of regally walking through regrets, and holding you head up on your tired shoulders, looking over them at the past, and turning ahead to look at that dim light that seems to emanate from the end of the hallway.

I have to be honest. When I do reviews, I don't do ANY research. I don't want to know who influenced you, if your an activist, anarchist, or asshole. I don't care what drives you as a musician. I feel everything I should know should be right there in the record. So I don't visit a band's web site when I get their album to review. I want to have that feeling that is nigh impossible in this day of instant information. Like way back in time when the radio wasn't an ad-driven behemoth with play lists that are more strident than a school cafeteria's lunch menu. I want to hear a new record with no preconceived notions. I want it to knock me out or leave me flat on it's own merits. Do I look up the band after the record is done? Only if they knock me out. I gotta say... Elbow had me on the hunt for more information halfway through the first song. Alternative rock? Ethereal Indie? Apparently they were influenced by Radiohead and Peter Gabriel era Genesis. I'm not an uber fan of Radiohead (I'm more of a "Bends" guy than "Kid A"), I'm down with "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway", and solo Gabriel. I can hear that heady mix of elegiac Peterisms with the haunting quality of the 'Heads at their most touching imbedded into "Build A Rocket Boys!". If this is what the 70's + the 90's equals, I want to major in math.

Rating: 9/10 A lovely record. A worthy way to decorate time.
- Jay Mazeffect

www.elbow.co.uk

Elbow- 'Open Arms' from trunk animation on Vimeo.

Following the immense success of the double platinum selling ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, Manchester’s finest five-piece are pleased to announce the release of their fifth studio album 'build a rocket boys!' which will be released in the United States on April 12th. A digital version of the album will be available March 8th to coincide with the March 7th UK release (Fiction). Once again, recorded in their facility within Blueprint Studios in Salford and produced by the band’s Craig Potter, ‘build a rocket boys!’ continues one of the most intriguing and heart warming stories in British music.

Musically, the band also travelled back in many ways, with sentiments and rhythms that graced their debut album ‘Asleep in the Back’, heard especially on ‘Lippy Kids’ and the album closer ‘Dear Friends’. Old friends returned and new friends were welcomed onto ‘build a rocket boys!’. The Hallé Youth Choir provided the swelling voices that grace six of the final eleven tracks, their locality and youth subtly linking the two main themes of the record; home and community.