So everyone's been banging on about how great the new Elbow album is. For the last 12 months I’ve been having none of it. I found the whole thing cynical and dubious. Rather than swaying me, even the Mercury Music Prize strengthened my will that I was right and everyone else in the wrong. But today, I have finally given “The Seldom Seen Kid” a good listen. And I’ve actually relented to your opinions. I am nothing if not a consistent flip-flopper.
When Ray Winstone and his cronies released their 1st album I thought it was a very promising debut. But since then I have treated the band with a degree of suspicion. What seemed like emotional authenticity soon gave way to an air of smug self-satisfaction. Albums passed, and everything was “so much about the music maaan”, that it actually started to seem a bit contrived; the joke-y knock-around cartoon video set inside rocket ships, the kind of deliberate smart-arse refusal to write a single with a memorable tune, and, more significantly, the press and public conviction this was all some kind of genius. Then last year ‘that’ song came out, which from here will henceforth be known as the official anthem for BBC trailers and sports tournament highlight packages. After years of critical acclaim and radio wilderness, it seemed Elbow had finally released a zeitgeist-hitting tune, and although the nation seemed to have a collective wank, the whole thing seemed rather dubious to me. It sounded like Embrace being ordered by their record company to write their own version of ‘Hey Jude’ or something. It felt like one of those string-laden ‘lighters aloft’ anthems which cunningly seems to push all the right buttons – y’know - that kind of polished melancholy by numbers that Keane and the likes are masters of. The kind of song emotionally inarticulate thickos want the song playing at their funeral just because they had a teary-eyed moment after a DJ played it during the drunken dying embers of their 21st birthday party or something.
But after having listened to the album, it turns out my cynicism and scoffing may have been ignorant and ill-founded. Elbow’s latest is actually rather good. It is quite a rare delight nowadays to hear a consistent album that isn’t just top-heavy with a couple of nice singles, followed by a load of ‘filler’ padding. So thumbs up lads – I’m sure my anonymous opinion of your canon means a great deal to you.
And while we’re on the subject, that ‘Spiralling’ single by the much-maligned Keane wasn’t too bad either. I mean I wouldn’t buy the track or owt like that, but at least it showed a nice, welcome change of direction.
There you go, I’ve said it. I’ve celebrated the praises of one of the most ridiculed contemporary acts. I can’t take it back now. It’s out there for the world to see. And until I inevitably flip-flop on my words again, I thoroughly intend to stand by them, and am willing to fight anyone that says otherwise.
Actually, I probably won’t really fight anyone who says otherwise. I’m not a fighter. The fact that I’ve just admitted a liking of a Keane song is surely evidence of that.
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