Review Summary: For Tomorrow: A Guide to Contemporary British Music, 1988-2013 (Part 71)
Poor Elbow.
Guy Garvey and company have been steadily making music that’s consistently great but never vital. Elbow has never been ahead of the zeitgeist and the one time they were directly in step with it - debuting along with the turn of the century crop of
Bends worshiping UK rock bands - they spent the ensuing decade trying to shake comparisons to their contemporaries. In the US, they’re so unknown that the first time they conducted a big tour of the states they were opening for Pete Yorn, an artist whose debut album had recently peaked 11 places outside the Billboard 100.
Blame it on the total lack of urgency in their music. Elbow never crafted that song that comes storming out of the speakers trying to get your attention - think the crisp acoustic strums of Coldplay’s “Yellow” or Muse’s crackling opening riff to “Plug in Baby”. No elaborate promotional stunts or headline baiting antics. Elbow have spent their career as the quintessential 3 singles and an album band. Dependably great and dependably boring.
What makes Elbow unique amongst their peers is that willingness to be boring. They transform a liability into a core strength as their songs are firmly adult. Elbow never seccumb to petty angst or techological anxiety, instead Elbow is pragmatic and even optimistic. Debut
Asleep in the Back was often heavy but never sad; facing mature issues like pregnancy, addiction, and death with comforting advice and stern confrontation. Their sophomore record
Cast of Thousands lightens things up significantly and presents a more accessible album, one that finds a perfect balance between Elbow’s fascination with texture and Guy Garvey’s subtle excellence at presenting hooks.
Elbow has never been an effortless band. Their music is clearly the product of hours of deliberation and didn’t arrive on a bolt of divine inspiration. This isn’t to say their music is labored over though,
Cast of Thousands plays like a group of great friends working out a lot of bright ideas in the studio together. Take for instance, how hard they must have had to work to deploy a gospel choir, the ultimate in rock band excess, on opening track “Ribcage” without it sounding overblown. Firstly, Garvey slyly undermines any tension that arises with the Big Opener by observing “We blew the doors, didn’t we?/Pissed in their champaign”. A clever bit of forewarning that the preemptively self serious Elbow was going to be lighting up this go-round. As the song progresses and layers start inching the song towards a big climax, drummer Richard Jupp and bassist Pete Turner stubbornly keep the song at an even keel. Even with the addition of piano, harmonies, and the London Community Gospel Choir the two refuse to let the song topple over, holding a firm downbeat that allows enough air for the song to swell to bursting, but hold its shape.
This has always been Elbow’s signature trick. They allow their songs to inflate to almost overwhelming proportions but finding a way to either settle things back down or let everything out in a tight, controlled burst. As a result of this discipline, Elbow always feels like they’re holding something back and an often compelling element of listening to their music is trying to figure out how they're going to reign in on their climaxes. On “Switching Off” Garvey slowly works his magnificently grained voice upwards towards during the chorus (“Early evening June/This room and a radio play/This I need to save/I choose my final thoughts”) before gracefully settling back into the verse melody (“Today/Switching off with you”). “Snooks (Progress Report)” and “I’ve Got Your Number” each undermine their soft rock passiveness in unique ways, the former upsets its gentle groove with pained explosions of feedback and Garvey’s wounded cries, the latter hides a bitter disposition against a lover (“Throwing advice like grenades at the table/You're spinning your wisdom in stories that change [...] Grow a f*cking heart love”) under a kind little shuffle that also gets upset harshly towards the end of the song.
Nestled dead center in
Cast of Thousands is the best Elbow song ever and, befitting the group's’ reputation as careful craftsmen, it’s the best Elbow song ever because it’s the most perfect Elbow song ever. “Not a Job” contains all familiar puzzle pieces - the swelling chorus, mundane subject matter, carefully shifting textures and melodic elements - but it’s impossible to imagine those pieces being arranged any better than they are here. Guy Garvey writes his best chorus ever, a wondrous thing that launches out of the melancholic realism of the verses and into the shimmering daydream of the chorus, along with a bridge and a coda both with their own beguiling melodies while the rest of the band construct a firm melodic backdrop for him. Maybe more than anything is just how incredibly empathetic the message of “Not a Job” is, that the best remedy for life’s general stresses is a good day off. It’s an obvious message but Elbow spin it like gentle wisdom. “You have to give yourself a break,” cautions Garvey, “Sleep it off.” With “Not a Job”, Elbow have crafted a personal day anthem, an ode to calling off for no reason and watching Futurama in bed all day.
While most of
Cast of Thousands expands on the previously established Elbow sound, it still remains firmly in their wheelhouse. But closer “Grace Under Pressure” finds the band stepping out on a risk. First, they bring back the gospel choir from “Ribcage”, but they once again undercut any bloat through drummer Richard Jupp. Instead of keeping another steady beat like he beats the living hell out of his kit. Aside from Jupp, “Grace Under Pressure” is another slow, rousing Elbow song, but with him it becomes an overpowering rush, always seeming like it’s about to shake itself apart but the band hold all the nuts and bolts together. When the song airs out into a huge group vocal (recorded at the band’s 2002 Glastonbury performance) it’s undeniable that this is the sound of a band that was confident from moment one truly stepping out into their own. And when they follow that with the quaint epilogue “Flying Dream 143” it’s hard to blame them for stretching things out a little longer, they still have so much more to say.
