Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
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CD Details
Artist: ElbowEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2008-04-22
Music Label: Geffen Records
Soundtracks:
- Starlings
- The Bones of You
- Mirrorball
- Grounds for Divorce
- An Audience with the Pope
- Weather to Fly
- The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
- The Fix
- Some Riot
- One Day Like This
- Friend of Ours
Music reviews of Seldom Seen Kid
Music Review: Elbow's "The Seldom Seen Kid" - Awesome Record, An Instant Classic
Rating: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Elbow's new album, The Seldom Seen Kid, is simply an awesome understated gem. It just goes to show you that if you produce beautiful nuanced music it will fly under the radar 90% of the time.
It's so interesting that as Coldplay is morphing into a guitar-synth alternative band with their newest album Viva La Vida, Elbow has stepped into the void of piano-band in the rock alternative world.
While I really do love both bands their music is really different. The record that Elbow has created here really stands on its own and is truly an instant classic. It is a rare new album that I play start to finish three times (as I always do when listening to a new album) and don't find a single song to be out of place. The entire album rocks, both as a total work and with each song taken on it's own.
Like Paddy Casey's newest album Addicted to Company, this is another example of a band that is bigger in Europe getting a formal introduction to the US. Maybe the success of Amy Winehouse has made record companies more bold to cash in. This is also another example of music that does not offend but may not always inspire. I personally love both albums but this Elbow release just blows everything out of the water.
The entire team behind this album has done a great job. The vocals and lyrics of Guy Garvey are certainly a big part of this record, but the entire band really can be heard on this guy. Craig Potter on keyboards in particular is given center stage, but Mark Potter also has some strong guitar riffs, such as on "Grounds For Divorce." The rhythm section is rounded out with Pete Turner on bass and Richard Jupp on drums. Richard Hawley does a guest vocal and guitar on the number eight track, "The Fix."
Production is attributed to Craig Potter. That's an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. Self produced albums are rarely this great. The liner book has some cool art along with the lyrics and more info about the recording. It's almost like a little story-book, and for liner geeks like me is a welcome extra compared to the bare pictures that are often included in CD inserts.
The record company has clearly decided to highlight the songs "One Day Like This," "Grounds For Divorce" and "Mirrorball." All three of them are awesome and have the potential to be hit singles. Still, I found so much to love on this album those weren't even my favorites.
"An Audience With The Pope," "Weather to Fly" and "Friend of Ours" are all subtle and smooth tracks with great lyrics, nice vocal melodies and harmonies and solid musicianship. "Some Riot" could have come right off of a Pink Floyd record. And "The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver" had an amazing operatic feel to it, and could easily have been confused with Coldplay but for the simple guitar chord bridge. To each their own. Like I said, I really did love all these tracks to varying degrees.
I know that Elbow has been around but this is the first album I really got to listen to closely. And I'm glad I did get to listen to this. Everybody has different tastes, but considering I rarely praise an album this much the fact that I wasn't a fan before this should lend some weight to my view.
Check this out. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
Enjoy.
Description of Seldom Seen Kid
Acclaimed for their innovative sound and candid, evocative lyrics, Elbow has received vast critical acclaim and been endorsed by major artists Blur, R.E.M. and U2. Elbow return with a new album, "The Seldom Seen Kid", their follow up to 2005's universally acclaimed Leaders Of The Free World and first for Fiction/Geffen Records. In support of the new set Elbow will be coming stateside kicking things off with a show in New York City April 26, 2008 at Webster Hall."New Elbow is sublime!!" - SUPERNOVA
"Their latest effort deserves to trigger a large-scale love affair. Elbow are at the top of their game" - UNCUT MAGAZINE
"Every now and then a great band like Elbow comes along. I am a big fan so its no surprise that I totally love the first song to surface from their upcoming album, The Seldom Seen Kid" - EACH NOTE SECURE
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now", "Ribcage" and "Station Approach", "Starlings" opens their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid rising from a bed of tumbling electronic subtlety like a depressed Atari game loading up, adding bare touches of piano, glimpses of ambient guitar, out of body background vocals, an understated pulse and a wisp of strings, before--EXCELSIS!--a fanfare avalanche of horns crashes the gate and elevates things to gasping palatial heights, before Guy Garvey's inimitable gravel tone and wrenchingly poetic reinterpretations of the everyday announce their arrival proper. It's astonishing, by far the most progressive moment on the album and if anything it sets the bar too high. But even when the pace dips, and songs like "Mirrorball" and "Weather to Fly" don't distinguish themselves quite enough, their textural peerlessness remains. This is a beautiful sounding record. Their collaboration with Richard Hawley may be more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty, but the highs, the riffing cross-stitch of "Ground for Divorce", the desolate grandeur of "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" and the enlightened string-laden anthem "On a Day Like This" (like their own Sound of Music--only substitute the Alpine peaks for a Manchester high-rise) number amongst the best of their career. --James Berry
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