album of the week: 5.1

Elbow

Build A Rocket Boys!

(2011)

why you'll love it: big sound, great voice

why you'll hate it: fairly generic, uninspired lyrics

Either I was browsing the internet again on one of my many Flaming Moe binge drinking seasons, or Elbow are a bunch of dirty liars. I could have sworn they had said they were done with albums, and would only be releasing singles, if anything. The announcement of Build A Rocket Boys! came as a pleasant surprise, off the heels of The Seldom Seen Kid (2008) and a fantastic live performance of the album a year later. After half a dozen trips through this latest release, I'm starting to wish the whole singles-only promise was true.

While some songs on this album are the moody and bombastic Manchester quintet at their best, there is a torturous amount of filler. Elbow is a band that already requires an attention span to enjoy, and it's rare that they'll write a song under 5 minutes. When it all goes wrong for one of their songs, it can really drag. The range of their sound, and Guy Garvey's fantastic voice usually saves the day, but fails to cover up some embarrassing cliched love song lyrics that sound more like catch phrases than anything heartfelt. "With Love" and "Open Arms" are top offenders of this.

Hacking away at the fluff and indigestible parts, there isn't much of a tracklist left. Five or six songs maybe. But those five or six songs are rich and meaty. "The Birds" is an instant classic, the best on here. The build up is very powerful. It makes me feel alive. "High Ideals" uses all sorts of percussion, cellos, finger snaps, and pianos, without sounding cluttered. These would make great singles, and the other few good songs would be damn good b-sides.

Build A Rocket Boys! simply has too many valleys and not enough peaks. The kind of genre Elbow rests in tends to favor execution more than innovation, so I don't see this a a great collapse for the band; but they definitely seemed short on ideas here. The way I see it, as long as you're wow-ing your audience, it really doesn't matter how big the show is. When you already have an established fanbase and four quality albums in the can, maybe sticking to singles isn't such a bad idea.