Elbow

[Jiminy Cricket]

^^ I haven't seen them about as of yet. I'll let you know if I find anything.

[Rad-Cold]

Anyone know anywhere I can download the Grounds for Divorce Vinyl B-Sides from?

 

Buy it!

 

The boys need the money :rolleyes:

[Black Rose]

Buy it!

 

The boys need the money :rolleyes:

 

That is what I want to do, buy the b-sides, but I can't find them anywhere.

[Jpw48]

Anyone know anywhere I can download the Grounds for Divorce Vinyl B-Sides from?

 

I've only seen them on vinyl i'm afraid. I still don't see the point of vinyl, unless they release all the tracks as downloads simultaneously.

On another note, does anyone know how limited Grounds For Divorce was?? I noticed they're all numbered

[Black Rose]

*holds up number 3951*

 

It wasn't limited as in the sense of Editors, but it was only available for 1 week before getting deleted. So basically once the current stocks are gone, that is it.

[Jpw48]

ooh okay thats interesting!!

 

*holds up number 0515!*

[Black Rose]

I bet yours was a pre-order :P

[shesawsparks]

As someone who is new to Elbow, which album would people say is best to buy after The Seldom Seen Kid?

[RunForTheHills]

^ Leaders Of the Free World, most definitely. It's almost as accessible as their new one.

And just work backwards from there I think.

[shesawsparks]

Just listening to the new album (arrived in the post this morning). I'm only about halfway through it and already, "WOW!!!" :o Loving Starlings, Mirrorball and Grounds For Divorce most so far :D

[RunForTheHills]

Yay :dance:

I love the album too.

[Black Rose]

Another new fan :D

[busybeeburns]

As someone who is new to Elbow, which album would people say is best to buy after The Seldom Seen Kid?

I would say start with Asleep In The Back - some of their best known songs are on their first album (Newborn, Powder Blue, Any Day Now) :)

[Black Rose]

I do like their cover of Black Magic Woman

[RunForTheHills]

I havn't heard all of Asleep In The Back, how does it compare against their newer material?

[MrMagpie]

I just bought Asleep in the back. It was only $0.99. I've never listened to Elbow before, so hopefully it is good.

[Jpw48]

I bet yours was a pre-order :P

 

Nope, just found it in HMV, they had all the vinyls with those low numbers as well, but this was before I heard the album and really started to like Elbow so I didn't buy them. Now the powers that be have decided t-shirts and books are more important that actual records in a record store, so they've stopped selling vinyl. :(

As far as I'm aware, that means there isn't a single shop in Cornwall that sells vinyl. :(

[Black Rose]

Have I told you about the Zavvi (formally Virgin) shop in Salisbury. When they refitted the shelves to make it more modern they didn't include anywhere for the singles as the current management at the time thought that CD singles were on their way out.

 

Only a couple months later they changed their mind and putted in a singles section, abit small and only containing singles not found in Woolies.

 

I miss the singles section in HMV at Basingstoke, it used to have the top 40, a collection of the new singles, mix of top 40 stuff and not top 40 stuff, plus a wide selection of old singles, cds & vinyls. Now that has been changed to an end of the aisle job, top 20 plus a few new releases :(

[Jpw48]

Yeah, its hard to believe why a record store would ditch records completely.

I mean okay, we can order it all online, but there's something nice about going in to town on the day of the latest radiohead single release and picking up a shiny new 7" of the track. I'm very keen on the artwork on cd's and stuff as well, so getting it four times bigger on a vinyl is another incentive.

 

My local HMV have even reduced the amount of space for singles, so instead of an entire wall, we have about two shelves, which is about enough to put a few r'n'b singles and some other popular stuff, but nothing which really appeals to me anymore. :(

[busybeeburns]

Elbow @ Blueprint Studios

 

Elbow performed a secret gig for fans, friends and industry-types.

 

BURY-based indie underdogs showcase their forthcoming tour in familiar surroundings.

 

For an exclusive one off concert, Elbow agreed to perform to an intimate crowd of devout Xfm-listening fans, family and some local industry types.

 

The venue (Blueprint Studios) as the crowd are informed, was used for the recording of Cast of Thousands and Leaders of the Free World. Standing in the main studio - a stark reminder of Manchester’s industrialist past, with its huge ship-beam ceilings and red-bricked walls – it seems clear how Elbow have drawn inspiration from it.

 

Whether it’s the heat, the draped windows or the anticipating crowd, the sense of claustrophobia, a recurring theme in Elbow’s output, is tangible.

 

On walks the band trumpets in hands, they blast lone notes into the sky; It’s flashy, glamorous and highly effective. Elbow look match fit on the improvised stage. Kitted out in their young-creative-type shirts and suits they look, perhaps appropriately tonight, as if they’re playing a family function.

 

Singer, Guy Garvey is on great form tonight. With his strained quasi Peter Gabriel voice, lyric “We kissed like we invented it” arches over the crowd in Garvey’s fatigued, yet austere delivery.

 

Popstar

 

For ‘On A Day Like This’ Garvey plays the working class popstar, arm outstretched wielding an aluminium rod he strikes it elaborately with a drumstick, as though he were mining the coke, before mustering the crowd in a mass sing-a-long.

 

The most overwhelming feature of tonight’s performance is how neatly the new material sits in between older material; holding it’s own, it expands and drives the group’s repertoire.

 

Highlight of the evening came in the subtle, ‘Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver.’ Starting a little rough ‘round the edges, it picked up momentum through a slick chord change and raised the bar of expectations.

 

For ‘The Fix’ Richard Hawley, the tracks hired gun, props himself up onstage next to Garvey. The pair clearly get along, but in such intimate surroundings their air of rapport seems overcooked and needy, provoking a series of unbearable banter. Such theatrics should perhaps be reserved for bigger audiences.

 

Unfortunately, the unjustified sense of ‘Coldplay imitation’ on a playful rendition of Grace Under Pressure continues to haunt the track’s strengths and blurs the groups advances since it’s release in 2003.

 

As Garvey sips some throat tonic to preserve his vocals, the band drive on into the next song - the feeling that they’ve got a long journey ahead is inescapable.

 

The show will broadcast across the Xfm network on Sunday 13th April.

 

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/music/live_reviews/s/1044015_elbow__blueprint_studios

[Jiminy Cricket]

New fan.

 

Bought The Seldom Seen Kid last weekend.

 

Oh my God.

 

This is unbelievable. :shocked2:

 

So I'm working my way backwards now. Really enjoying Leaders Of The Free World, especially Mexican Standoff and the title track.

[busybeeburns]

Elbow and Coldplay - Why the world is a shithouse

 

Two contemporaneous bands, both with new albums this year. Early touring partners, good friends and there pretty much the similarity ends. Coldplay can genuinely lay claim to being the biggest band on the planet just now. Elbow would struggle to put a convincing argument about being the biggest band in Manchester. Coldplay’s new album will see acres of rainforest decimated to provide the paper for the mountain of column inches they will generate. Elbow’s new album will not have any environmental implications at all. Chris Martin is a whiny, macrobiotic-obsessed, preachy gimp. Guy Garvey is absolutely icebox.

 

But as artists, there is no comparision. Coldplay aren’t truly evil, like Blunt-evil, but they really are the sound of EMI. They are a Tesco group for sure, but I’ll admit they have a wide reach. Young and old, boys and girls, Brits and Americans - they truly are Everyman. Elbow are tough and spiky and dark and questioning. They are unlikely to be a group which appeals to a huge demographic. But is that a bad thing? Is consensus good in pop? Should at family parties Gran, Auntie and teenager all agree on the choice of music? No! Music is great at bringing us together and all that jazz, but it is also great for helping to define who and what you are. Elbow’s music wouldn’t appeal to a specific age, it will appeal to a specific type of person, and that’s where their talent lies. Coldplay’s blandness enables them to get out more, get the filmstar wives and the patronage of Sir Bob Geldof but it means that in 20 years people are not going to look back on how great the music was. I mean, Dire Straits were the Coldplay of the 80’s, but I think most teens embarking on a musical journey of discovery these days are more likely to look to the Beatles and the Clash than ‘Brothers In Arms’.

 

Maybe it’s enough just to be great? Maybe knowing he has a solid body of work which stands comparision with the best guitar music of the last twenty years is plenty for Garvey? I hope so. Because in a world where, sadly, we don’t have the meritocracy we deserve, it’s Chris Martin who is standing at Live 8 and amassing a wealth that would sicken a Russian oligarch. And that’s a constant reminder that life isn’t fair. So keep ploughing away Elbow, the world needs you. Otherwise, we are going to have to take the fifth-form poetry platitudes of errant attention-seeking twaddle like ‘Fix You’ as our anthems. And that simply would not stand.

 

http://extremelisteningmode.com/2008/03/31/elbow-and-coldplay-why-the-world-is-a-shithouse/

[RunForTheHills]

New fan.

 

Bought The Seldom Seen Kid last weekend.

 

Oh my God.

 

This is unbelievable. :shocked2:

 

So I'm working my way backwards now. Really enjoying Leaders Of The Free World, especially Mexican Standoff and the title track.

Yes! :dance:

I was blown away when I first got into them as well. I don't know why they're not that well known.

I still havn't heard their first album though. I'll need to hunt for that.

[busybeeburns]

Elbow: delicate finesse and brutal beauty

 

Sublime: Guy Garvey of Elbow

 

Matthew Magee hails the uncommon power of the Mancunian rockers as they play in Glasgow

 

Elbow have watched for 10 years as contemporary after contemporary have hit the big time, scoring world tours and hit singles as the mainstream has flirted with the earnest indie of the likes of Coldplay and Snow Patrol.

 

With their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, and their current single Grounds for Divorce, Elbow are finally making a dent in the mainstream, a change evidenced by the fact that the cheers in Glasgow for newer numbers drowned out those for the old.

 

The five by-now slightly grizzled thirtysomething Mancunians who make up the band wrestled roars and squawls from their instruments as easily as they picked out the intricate delicacies that eddy and bubble underneath them.

 

Whether it was the looping, elliptical bass line in Leaders of the Free World, the pulse-shifting stutter-drumming in Grace Under Pressure or the ever-present wash of perfectly judged, sympathetic guitar atmospherics, Elbow reproduced their complex sound seemingly without effort.

 

The soul of Elbow, though, is the rough velvet of Guy Garvey's voice, an emotional tug of a sound whose throaty idiosyncrasies convey an honesty greater than just the sum of four albums' worth of confessional lyrics.

 

Garvey was sublime, letting his voice show a crack and a strain in the glimmering twist of the concert opener Starlings, a song that hinges on a single climax whose despairing rasp was as honest and unshowy as it was affecting and poignant.

 

Elbow showed themselves to be a band of uncommon power. The muscular blues of Grounds for Divorce stoked the fires that burned brightest in Forget Myself, an anthem that preserved some distanced dignity even among the shout-along choruses.

 

Down in the depths of the sound, though, lurk the precious details that raise these tales of romantic despair or vignettes of hubris and loneliness far beyond the mundanity of run-of-the-mill self-pitying indie.

 

After the agile, flashing melodies of old favourite New Born had slipped away, the band moved into the song's long, tantric cadence, a mesmeric burn-out of restraint, then agitation, then frenzy which ended with Garvey shrieking tortured, despairing rapture.

 

As the crescendo built to deafening levels, Craig Potter's organ chords first whispered then roared, dragging the ear and the mind in new harmonic directions, bringing a startling new dimension even as the song disintegrated in a feast of distorted howls.

 

This concert was a show of delicate finesse and brutal, booming beauty, a feast as much for the mind as the ears which showed a few of the bigger-selling indie stars what the fruits are of a decade in the relative wilderness.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/10/bmelbow110.xml

[Black Rose]

My verdict from last night's show is that they were fucking fantastic, the best band I have seen live for ages, well since February when I saw Travis, which they edge out to go top of my best gigs.