Build a Rocket Boys!

Elbow are the musicians with iron-hard principles

Play the music only you want to hear, and there will be a million who will listen to it. Working under this motto, the Manchester-based band Elbow headed slow but steadily to the world star status to become a performer imitated by others and never to be mixed up with anybody. They began their music journey in the nineties, guarding eagerly their original style and reluctantly letting it anything of other performers. Led by the wonderful vocalist and amazing master of poetic craft, Guy Garvey, the ensemble played their own music without making even a single step towards the pop-oriented format. Only recently, after the 2008 release of The Seldom Seen Kid, did they gain the fame they could have had much earlier had they not been so loyal to their iron-hard principles. The unimaginable attention paid by the press, sold-out stadium gigs and high chart positions changed nothing in the musicians themselves or in their music views. Elbow’s new long player, Build A Rocket Boys!, released on a spring day in 2011, has no slightest traces of bragging or contempt for less successful peers. On the contrary, musically and lyrically, this record has gone the same route once trodden by the band’s old works, which makes it even better.

Heaven of youth

Judging by Build A Rocket Boys!, we might conclude that the Elbow members want to go even higher, to the sky or even out into the space. Actually, Guy Garvey, the author of the lyrics, longs for a heaven of youth. A band with lots of years behind and a moment of glory reached only now, Elbow wish they had their best time far ahead. The album’s opener, Birds, is filled with the sense of soaring and lightness, but it is also affected with subtle sadness. The next piece, Lippy Kids, gives the album a line that became its title and also coveys an idea of freedom, carelessness and a journey through time and space. The easy music blessed with distinct melodies hides not so easy poetry. Guy prefers to speak privately ad frankly and at first seems to be telling a story of his own, but later the listeners will unwillingly discover that he is talking about their problems too. When it comes to how the Elbow musicians master their instruments, it is clear that with each new album they get closer to perfection. On few occasions we can spot experimental solutions, which thank to their infrequence look interesting and harmonic with the test of the material. For example, the lyrical ballad With Love takes on some Afro-American flavor, quite a rarity for Elbow.

Elbow follow their thoughtful plan

Still, there is something in Build A Rocket Boys! That makes it different from the other albums by Elbow. This is unprecedented widespread and precise, efficient and effective application of choir vocals sometimes to contrast Guy Garvey and other times to support him. This idea makes a number of tracks (The Night Will Always Win, The River, Open Arms) sound like church hymnals with their lyrics becoming even more significant. However, this innovation from Elbow was not predetermined by the band’s desire to somehow adjust their sounding to the contemporary standards, to something other performers do; and this is a great part of the Elbow art concept. Another natural and easily explainable modification is the darkening or heaviness of the music general atmosphere. Pretty aged now, the musicians simply can not sing about what they used to sing about fifteen years ago, especially due to having such a great poet as Guy Garvey. Build A Rocket Boys! leaves no doubt that the makers of this album are true professionals and genuine artists who will follow their path and cause no matter what local successes or fame they might have.