Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid

 
A retrospective look at the career trajectory of Manchester quintet Elbow is enough to make clear that The Seldom Seen Kid was always going to be their tour de force. Having lurked furtively around the fringe of the mainstream spotlight for the best part of two decades, conscientiously refining their sound with each album, the band finally made a bid for popular acceptance in 2005 with their superlative third offering, Leaders Of The Free World.

While that record prompted an avalanche of accolades for the band, it was 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid that shoved them, blinking yet confident, even further into the limelight than they probably imagined they could go. The album not only garnered a slew of critical responses, it went on to win the coveted Mercury Prize; finally, one of the UK’s most underrated and dedicated rock bands had gained official recognition, prompting a chuffed Guy Garvey to admit: “this is the best thing that's ever happened to us."

Thus The Seldom Seen Kid. The first Elbow album to be completely self-produced and recorded, it has much in common stylistically, sonically and thematically with Leaders Of The Free World, though it’s arguably a braver, more streamlined and more pop savvy affair than its predecessor.

“Starlings” pulls the listener ineluctably in, a slowly unfurling tale of a humble man’s uphill struggle for love (“so yes I guess I’m asking you / to back a horse that’s good for glue / and nothing else”). Woozy backing vocals float in the background along with sweeping synths and Garvey’s astute lyrics, the song’s weightless beauty interspersed by dashing blasts of brass.

The bright Mariachi strums and rattling percussion of “The Bones Of You” rise next into an infectious, brooding chorus and a kaleidoscopic ending, unexpectedly deliquescing into a barely audible ending of jazz trumpet and found sounds. Third track “Mirrorball” rides the kind of spacious, echoing rhythm you might find on a Massive Attack record, matched to a coruscating soundtrack that’s as sentimental as anything Elbow have done.

Thus far, the unhurried pacing, disarming beauty and determined, if subtle signs of innovation are all classic Elbow motifs. But when the massive “Grounds For Divorce” kicks in, with its stadium-sized chorus, shimmering synthesized bassline and wall of backing vocals, it’s obvious there’s a more swaggering ambition to The Seldom Seen Kid, an aspect underlined by the euphoric “One Day Like This,” - surely the closest this band have ever come to writing a radio-friendly “pop” hit.

Garvey’s lyrics provide many of The Seldom Seen Kid’s highlights. His balancing act of heart-on-sleeve sensitivity and wry humour make for a compelling kind of proletarian poetry, delivered in a wise and life-worn voice as singular as that of Mark Hollis or Kurt Wagner.

And it’s this quirkiness – in the lyrics and in the music - that wins out. The exquisitely imagined tale of inflammatory love that is “An Audience With The Pope”; the wistful and nostalgic “Weather To Fly,” where Garvey overdubs his own falsetto to create an ethereal backing track; the curiously lugubrious “Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver”; and the jaunty, charming tribute to fiddled horse races and corrupt pigeon fancying that is “The Fix” (featuring Richard Hawley) - all are songs that could only have been written by Elbow. And they’re blinding.

A band as good as Elbow should have gotten recognition long ago. But as Garvey would doubtless agree, it’s much better late than never at all.