Album Review: Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!

Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!

In 2007, almost out of nowhere, came one of the most surprising overnight success' stories in British music. Elbow's fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, scooped the prestigious Mercury prize and went on to sell over a million copies in the UK alone. The band from Bury were suddenly huge and tracks such as the majestic One Day Like This carried them firmly into the musical mainstream. And now comes Build A Rocket Boys!, only the fifth album from the band in over a decade.

I will be honest: it has taken me a long, long time to like Elbow. Over the years I have bought all but one of their albums (ironically, the missing one is Leaders Of The Free World, arguably my favourite of the lot) and have seen them live on several occasions. And yet, they are still not a band that I would ever say I loved in the way that I do a handful of other groups.

And, as with every other record that they have made, Build A Rocket Boys! is not something you can easily review on first listen. Elbow's beautiful knack of careful orchestration and Guy Garvey's terrific lyrics weedle into your brain on multiple listens, and each time you listen to it you hear something that you have never heard before. I'm half a dozen listens into Build A Rocket Boys! already, and it is still growing on me with every listen.

There's nothing quite as instantly commercial as Grounds for Divorce or One Day Like This here and so, in a way, it's much more like Elbow's earlier albums. Mind you, there's a bold and stunning singalong chorus on Open Arms, whilst the superb Lippy Kids is set to become an Elbow favourite. The highlight for me so far, however, is the amazingly beautiful The Night Will Always Win, a gentle ballad that's easy to overlook, nestled as it is in the middle of the album.

On first listen, I wasn't convinced by Build A Rocket Boys! By the fourth listen, I'd started to really like it. I now think it's absolutely great, which means by this time next month I'll probably consider it one of the greatest albums ever made. Great album, great band.