Product Description

Epic post-rock tinged emotional indie stalwarts Elbow release their fourth album 'The Seldom Seen Kid', another staunchand anthemic collection of songs. The tense and emotional sound of previous records remains, but with a distinctly morecommercial riff-based template, particularly on lead single'Grounds For Divorce'. The band produced the record themselves, as with previous records, lending it a homespun qualitythat would be out of synch with any external influence. Revered by their peers as a reliably independent act, Elbow have created a subtly innovative extension of their sound and scope with 'The Seldom Seen Kid'.

Track Listing

1. Starlings
2. The Bones Of You
3. Mirrorball
4. Grounds For Divorce
5. An Audience With The Pope
6. Weather To Fly
7. The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
8. The Fix - Elbow, Richard Hawley
9. Some Riot
10. One Day Like This
11. Friend Of Ours
12. We're Away

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24 in Music
• Released on: 2008-03-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 56 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Customer Reviews

Please don't go
If its true this is the last album, what a way to go. Gorgeous, uplifting, sublime.
Been a fan since Asleep, saw them live for this albums tour and knocked me out.
Please don't leave us, each album just get better and better. A true masterpiece.

ulp...
...can't seem to get that lump out of my throat. Or stop listening to Weather to Fly... could be a connection there.
My god I love this.
Seen them live four times now and the last time a few weeks ago was the best. They've been together for 18 years so it wouldn't be surprising if they stop making albums, but I really hope they don't - each one just gets better.
This is my favourite album by my favourite band. So there.

Let this album be your friend
I'm not sorry at all that these reviews begin to sound alike: if there was any hype about this band it would be fully deserved. But there is no hype; just the sound of a group of friends comfortable in their sound, displaying a dry wit, a bruised heart and an all enveloping tenderness that ill fits with a Manc guitar band. There's something for everyone in the deft production and range of styles on show - take this album into your family and cuddle up to it.