The latest music, news, reviews
and live dates!

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

Elbow return in March with their fourth studio album and follow up to 2005’s critically acclaimed Leaders of the Free World. The album is a personal affair, recorded and mixed by the band unaided at Salford’s Blueprint Studios.

It is fitting then that The Seldom Seen Kid, lyrically at least, addresses deeply personal issues such as love and loss. It is the product of a band now unashamedly grown up, and claiming their place as elder-statesmen of British rock, with bands such as Keane, Snow Patrol and Coldplay clearly taking their influence from them.

While Guy Garvey’s wit and irony shine through at times (‘I’ve been working on a cocktail/Called grounds for divorce’), tracks like album closer Friend of Mine, a tribute to band friend Bryan Glancy, the seldom seen kid of the title who died in 2006, manages to be both majestic and delicate.

Friend of Mine is the perfect demonstration of the kind of built up ballad Elbow do so brilliantly. The emotion in Garvey’s voice is obvious as he admits he is ‘never very good at goodbyes’ and the sparseness of the music at the beginning of the song is the perfect accompaniment. The track builds into a sweeping orchestral movement, making it the perfect funeral song.

Elsewhere there are demonstrations of beautiful Elbow ballads and Weather to Fly stands as the album’s pivotal moment. If any of Seldom Seen Kid’s songs stand as a reason for Elbow to share in the success of the bands they have so obviously influenced, it is this one. With luscious harmonies, gorgeous piano, and a practically hypnotic beat, the track sounds almost blissful in its melancholy. However, it lacks the instant catchiness of something like Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars or Coldplay’s Fix You, and while it doesn’t suffer for this, it means that Elbow may once again be overlooked by the mainstream.

Some Riot, too, is spine-chillingly brilliant, managing to simultaneously sound simple and epic. It is perfect chill-out fodder, and yet would not sound out of place as a soundtrack to a Hollywood film.

All this is not to say, however, that Elbow have made an album of perfect piano ballads and stadium sing-alongs. The Seldom Seen Kid can, at times, become slightly dreary and verge on the mundane. Starlings is not the most exciting album opener and On A Day Like This is a little too formulaic. The orchestra is in place, as is the catchy chorus, yet it fails to entice any sort of reaction and instead becomes just another Elbow ballad.

Thank God then that the band are at times open to experimentation. An Audience with the Pope and The Fix have a haunting, almost sexy quality to them and are standout tracks because they are so different to (yet just as brilliant as) the melancholy anthems Elbow specialise in.

The album’s finest point, however, comes courtesy of the Zepplin-esque lead-off single Grounds for Divorce. Perhaps the most overtly ‘rock’ track of Elbow’s career, the single has catchy guitar riffs in abundance and feels more Western America than even The Killers have ever managed. Yet that’s not to say that it is lacking in the emotion of the rest of the album – the track is both rapturous and cathartic.

Elbow have produced their best album to date, and one that deserves to earn them the mass adulation their contemporaries receive. It remains one of life’s great mysteries as to why Elbow have remained one the music industries most constant bridesmaids, never the bride. Perhaps The Seldom Seen Kid will change all that, it certainly deserves to.