Theatrical & emotional
Complex is right...styles all around yet all fit together seemlessly. Sound is engaging and, while it can't get much better with each listen, the volume gets turned up with each playing!

Amazing -- My First Elbow Album, Too..
What an astounding album!

Overall, the lush orchestration and highly unique compositions really set this album apart from anything I've heard as of late. I'm surprised these guys aren't massive over here, as nearly every track blew me away.

Key Tracks: The Bones of You, The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver, Some Riot, Friend of Ours .. tons of emphasis on those last two, for sure.

The album itself is dedicated to Bryan Glancy, one of Guy Garvey's (the lead singer of Elbow) best friends who died suddenly in 2006. (Courtesy of Wikipedia..)

(Knowing this, the last two tracks mentioned seem even more heartbreaking, but absolutely breathtaking at the same time..)

I'll definitely be checking out the rest of Elbow's catalog!

eh?
So Elbow have won the Mercury Music Prize and people all over the country are scrambling to find out what they've missed. From where I'm standing it's a bit of a mystery. There are several places on the album where my attention is wandering and there's nothing innovative here and nothing that really gets the hairs standing on end.

Its all very safe. Very well put together, and has at least three excellent tracks. But ultimately the best you can say is that they do a lot better job at what they do than Coldplay or Snow Patrol. But that's damning with faint praise.

It's a decent album but no more than that. Given that, why did it win the Mercury? I can only guess that it was a compromise. But sadly the Mercury Prize should showcase the best of British. Let's hope that some British band hears the new TV on The Radio album "Dear Science" and is inspired to make next years contest a bit more interesting.

Elbow Room
The new album from Elbow marks a welcome return to something that has been missing from a good many CD's lately: Dynamics. I have not heard this kind of fidelity since the likes of Steely Dan or the underappreciated Blue Nile, "The Seldom Seen Kid" is a sonic delight. From the opening cascades of "Starlings" to the final farewell of "Friend of Ours," Elbow has concocted an enveloping orchestral whirl of music.

The sound of the band seems to fall somewhere between Coldplay's pop-progressive and The Bends era Radiohead's more straightforward days, while showcasing Guy Garvey's gravelly voice, literate lyrics and showing a deeply melancholic bent. While the most accessible work here, "Grounds For Divorce," is a harder edged blues number, most of the songs here drift through their sad tales of loss ("The Bones of You"), a friend's self-destruction ("Some Riot") and loneliness ("Tower Crane Driver"). "Starlings" is even deeper, as the older man dreams of being an acceptable suitor for the younger partner he sees and "dreamed of you and I/and marriage in an orange grove," all while reconciling himself to this dismal resignation.

"I guess I'm asking you to
back a horse that's good for glue
and nothing else.
But find a man that's truer than,
find a man that needs you
more than I."

When Graves finally does allow love to overwhelm him, it's a weird sort of sublime giddiness. The "Mirrorball" couplet "We took the town to town last night, we kissed like we invented it" catches the tone perfectly while still holding Elbow's sophisticated musical excitement in check. If bands like Coldplay, later Talk Talk, The Blue Nile or Snow Patrol wet your whistle, then Elbow's lush "The Seldom Seen Kid" should be seen...and heard.

Brilliant, not to be missed
Album of the year, easily, maybe the best album of the 00's. I NEVER give 5 stars, but this is the kind of work that changes the pop music landscape...